498 SNAKES. 



One more example shall be added, of what Professor 

 Goode considered a remarkable instance of hereditary 

 instinct. In a hay-field was found a nest of eggs, one of 

 which was cut open, when a small but perfectly formed 

 'milk adder' within immediately assumed a menacing 

 attitude and 'brandished' its tongue. Some of the other 

 eggs were then torn open, the young in which acted in a 

 similar manner. Then the old snake appeared, and after 

 endeavours to encourage this unexpected family, put her 

 head on a level with the ground and opened her mouth, 

 when the young ones vanished down her throat. 



It is worthy of notice that in many of the above cases 

 the mother snake made a signal noise, that the young ones 

 understood this signal, and that she opened her mouth in 

 a manner which they readily comprehended. ' This con- 

 currence of testimony is not to be disregarded,' says 

 Professor Goode. And the reader will admit the force of 

 these evidences. Those witnesses, dispersed over thousands 

 of square miles, had entered into no compact to make their 

 accounts agree ; nor did one spectator in Kansas know 

 what another in New Jersey was looking at or writing about. 

 After such a weight of evidence, and in face of the 

 decision arrived at by the American Convention, it is 

 greatly to be lamented that the Field, so far from 

 advancing like our American friends, now retrogrades on this 

 question. So lately as October i88i, when another case 

 was cited of the maternal refuge, the Editor closes his 

 columns against investigation ; and refuses to be convinced 

 unless he were to see ' the young vipers at the Zoological 

 Gardens obligingly run in and out of their mothers' mouths,' 



