l893-] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY, 65 



cupied, each pair with its own abdominal scute, which has a pur- 

 chase or hold on the ground; hence the curious fact that, however 

 long a serpent may be, it comes out of its skin without much 

 forward movement of its body. When the tail is reached this 

 peculiar play of the ribs is wanting to act upon the skin. But 

 the caudal tapering makes the shedding easier, as, in fact, the 

 skin can then be shaken off. As the end of the tail of the Pine 

 Snake is a hollow spike, this, for obvious reasons, cannot be 

 turned inside out, so it is left turned inside of the skin, all else 

 being turned inside out. 



Truly my Pityophis, in its new attire, seemed transformed in 

 beauty, such was the contrast between the old coat and the new 

 in the freshness of color. The white ground had a rich creamy 

 hue, not unlike that which the ladies so admire in antique lace. 

 There was, too, a soft warmth in the brown, the chocolate, and 

 the chestnut. With some serpents the new skin shows a fine 

 iridescence in the light. But this soon gives out, the old skin 

 getting dull and lustreless, for the serpents have no power of color 

 mimicry. 



With many others I have not been able to see " the wisdom of 

 the serpent." Still, I think we may claim for it better manners 

 than are found among its reptilian cousins of higher rank, for 

 in the disposition of its cast-off linen no serpent ever mistook the 

 bread-bin for the laundry basket. 



A certain eloquence has of late descanted upon ''the mis- 

 takes of Moses." Might it not be pleasanter to look into the 

 wisdom of this great leader of his race ? I can only accept evo- 

 lution as a method'in which the Creator works His will, as when 

 He makes one vessel to honor and another to dishonor. Appear- 

 ing almost the last of the vertebrates, the serpent comes a limb- 

 less, a degraded creature. Hence this Moses struck upon a vast 

 cosmic law which only the biology of to-day could formulate — 

 the evolution of progression and the evolution of retrogression — 

 that in the Creative purpose there is a differentiating backward 

 and a differentiating forward. It surely, then, was retrospective 

 wisdom Avhich said of the serpent : " Doomed above every beast 

 of the field, upon thy belly shalt thou go." 



Note.— Up to within a few years the physiologies taught that the tadpole's tail, just be- 

 fore the transformation into the frog, was dropped or lost by atrophy. Even yet thisidea 

 appears in some natural histories. During the last year I read a description, by a well- 



