530 SNAKES. 



comprehends the reason ; the poet thinks the birds are 

 * fascinated.' 



I am not aware that any other ophiologist than Dr. 

 Stradhng, in discussing the ' fascination ' idea, has attributed 

 to the tongue of a snake an allurement in the shape of a 

 prospective meal. In one of his papers to Land and Water 

 (April 2, i88i) he described a hen that had been put into the 

 cage for his anaconda's dinner, making ' a determined dab at 

 the snake's tongue, sometimes two or three dabs in quick 

 succession,' every time the quivering black line caught her 

 eye. ' Now why does she do that ? ' he asks. ' Certainly 

 from no animosity towards the snake, in whose presence she 

 has not the slightest consciousness of danger, as she was 

 otherwise engaged in pecking up the maize that was in the 

 cage. My own idea is that she mistakes the tongue for a 

 wriggling worm,' adds the observer in almost the very words 

 I had used more than six years previously,^ lo^ig before 

 we had exchanged a word on the subject or were even 

 acquainted. He further described in the same issue oi Land 

 and Water, and also in the Field (June 3, 1882), how a 

 scarlet tanager in Costa Rica had been attracted out of a 

 tree down close to a snake by its quivering tongue, the only 

 moving thing about it. Dr. Stradling had seen a frog 

 similarly snapping at the tongue of a snake, and thinks that 

 one of the chief uses of the mysterious little organ is to 

 attract insectivorous animals. My own observations prove 

 the tongue to be a snccessfid lure, which may go a good way 

 towards explaining ' fascination ; ' but whether an intentional 



^ Papers on the Ophidians in the Dublin University Magazine, January 

 1876 et seq. 



