470 THE SNAKES OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
In the Port Elizabeth Museum two snakes will often seize a frog. Both 
start swallowing. When their noses meet, the larger usually engulphs 
the smaller and swallows him whole, frog and all. 
The study of snakes is called Ophiology. 
People speak of the ‘“‘ Wisdom of the Serpent. 
wisdom than a lizard. 
Snakes are animals, inasmuch as they belong to the great Animal 
Kingdom. 
Snakes are classed as Reptilia, of the Order Ophidia. 
Snakes can be divided into five groups, viz., Burrowing Snakes, Tree 
Snakes, Fresh-water Snakes, Sea Snakes, Terrestrial or Ground Snakes. 
” 
They have no more 
Snakes hunt for their prey mostly during the daytime, and the early 
part of the evening. 
They also issue forth on warm moonlight nights. On the slightest 
approach of chilliness of the air they retire to their retreats. 
Snakes have been known to live over two years without food. 
Young Puff Adders, born in the Port Elizabeth Museum, grew two 
inches in length and a quarter of an inch in breadth, without food. From 
the moment they were born, till three months later, they refused all food, 
yet they grew in length and girth. 
As soon as the young of the snakes are born they shift for themselves. 
Their mothers take no heed of them. 
Snakes are very low in intelligence. They have very tiny brains, and 
their sensibility to pain is very blunt. 
If a snake’s brain and its heart, or either, be removed, it will live quite 
a long while. 
After severing the head the body of a snake will wriggle, coil and quiver 
for many hours. 
If the nose be irritated, the jaws of the severed head sometimes open, 
the fangs spring erect, and the mouth closes with a snap. 
Snakes can penetrate into the innermost retreats of rats and mice, 
hence their great value as vermin destroyers. 
Learn which are the harmless kinds of snakes, and protect them. 
They are your friends. If you want to make certain, send them to the 
author of this book, and he will be pleased to tell you. 
Snakes will seldom eat dead food. When very hungry they sometimes 
do so in captivity. 
Snakes nearly always wait till the victim moves before seizing it. 
In Bechuanaland, a Cobra was found in a fowl house with five whole 
hens’ eggs inside it. The Cobra was killed, the eggs taken out and set 
undera hen, They all hatched out into healthy chickens. 
Another Cobra was discovered in a hen’s nest. It immediately dis- 
gorged six eggs entire, there net being a crack in any of them. 
Indians sometimes catch Cobras by placing fowls’ eggs inside a wire 
cage in the snakes’ haunts. The Cobra enters between the wires, swallows 
one or more eggs whole, and consequently cannot escape. 
The author had a pet English canary. One morning he found a snake 
coiled up inside the cage, asleep. It had swallowed the bird whole, and 
could not get through the wire bars of the cage. 
