THE VIPER, OR ADDER. Ql 



distended : he concluded she had devoured her own 

 offspring. At night the vasculum was laid on a table, 

 and the lizard was therefore at rest ; in the morning 

 the young ones had reappeared, and the mother 

 was as lean as at hrst." 



" Mr. Henry Doubleday, of Epping, supplies the 

 following information : — ' A person whose name is 

 English, a good observer, and one, as it were brought 

 up in Natural History under Mr. Doubleday 's tuition, 

 once happened to set his foot on a lizard in the 

 forest, and while the lizard was thus held down by 

 his foot, he distinctly saw three young ones run out 

 of her mouth ; struck by such a phenomenon, he 

 killed and opened the old one, and found two other 

 young ones which had been injured when he trod 

 on her.' In both these instances," Mr. Newman 

 adds, " the narrators are of that class who do know 

 what to observe, and how to observe it ; and the 

 facts, whatever explanation they may admit, are not 

 to be dismissed as the result of imagination or mis- 

 taken observation."* 



We must confess that our own incredulity has 

 been so staggered of late by these and similar 

 instances, that we are by no means disposed to 

 deny, because we cannot fully comprehend, the 

 mystery of the process. It is admitted by some 



* The Zoologist, f- 2269. 



