SNAKES. 171 
from Mr. Arthur Nichols’ very pleasingly written book on 
**Snakes, Marsupials, and Birds”: ‘‘It has been most positively 
asserted and widely believed that young Snakes, when alarmed, 
take refuge in the stomach of the parent by going down her 
throat. Nature has made no provision for this, at all events, as 
far as anatomy can discover, and the notion is likely to have 
arisen in the mind of one who opened one of the viviparous 
Snakes, and found the unborn young within it, and jumped to the 
conclusion that they had gone there for safety. I witnessed an 
interesting performance of an Australian Snake, which at first 
struck me with considerable astonishment, and I might have gone 
away with a similar impression had I not inquired more closely 
into the phenomenon. The Snake was crossing a bare spot, 
followed by a number of young, and did not for a moment 
observe me. Whenshe did, however, she coiled herself up, and the 
young disappeared like magic, while she raised her head and hissed 
continuously. There was no cover to hide a worm, yet, in an 
instant, every one of the young Reptiles had vanished. It floated 
across my mind at once that there was an opportunity of ascer- 
taining whether they had gone down her throat, and I fired a 
charge of shot into the coiled-up mass. The parent was cut to 
pieces, together with some of the young, and I despatched several 
more which were still endeavouring to hide themselves among the 
shattered coils. This they did most persistently, for, whenever I 
turned the body over and rolled them from under it with a stick, 
they darted back to their place of concealment, no doubt made 
quite familiar to them by habit. Some squeezed themselves 
under the body, others lay close by the side of it, accommodating 
themselves to every bend in the coils. Not one was found in the 
throat or stomach either dead or alive, and it is impossible that 
some should not have been killed there had they been inside the 
parent at the moment she was shot.” 
Had this been a harmless Snake it would have been easy to 
have pinned it with a stick and made the examination at leisure ; 
‘*but it was one of the most deadly ‘ 
A great deal might be written for and against the statement 
that certain Snakes allow their young to enter their bodies in 
time of danger, did space permit. 
