5i6 SNAKES. 



columns of La?id and Water, April 3, 1880, as * Totsey,' 

 together with her brother ' Snap,' the latter named ' from a 

 trifling infirmity of temper when young.' These two were 

 the offspring of the Panama boa who gave birth to 20 live 

 young at the Gardens, June 30, 1877. Of these twenty, Mr. 

 Sclater notified, at one of the Zoological Society's meetings 

 in the following November, that all but one were still alive. 

 Of the two which became the property of Dr. Stradling and 

 were tamed by him, he wrote, ' Any one can handle them 

 with impunity;' and that they recognised him among 

 others in the dark, permitting him only to touch them at 

 such a time. * Lolo ' and ' Menina' are the pretty names of 

 two other tame constrictors belonging to this ophiophilist, 

 and whose amiable and interesting manners were recorded 

 in the above journal. Of * Totsey' the Dr. writes, ' She is the 

 most gentle and affectionate snake I ever had.' As this 

 same Miss Ophidia happened to be an inmate at the 

 Gardens in January 1882, when the pair of illustrations 

 (p. 205) were in preparation, she adorns that page ; 

 though in truth it was one of her brothers or sisters, 

 then rather smaller, that really did hang thus on the branch 

 as I sketched it at the time, September 24, 1880. 



That some of the most venomous serpents are also capable 

 of being tamed we have many proofs. They use their fangs 

 in self-defence, actuated by fear or hunger; and where no 

 fear exists, a serpent would not deliberately crawl about, 

 expending its precious and only protective power, venom, 

 on any object it met with. Would a cobra or a crotalus in 

 its native woods approach any living thing it saw and' 

 indiscriminately strike it with its poison fangs.? No. Its 



