174 Popular Delusions in Natural History. [Sess. 



one who will do so. It has been objected that the risk of 

 being bitten by the snake while attempting to tie a string 

 round its neck to prevent the young getting out again is 

 sufficient to deter people from trying i\\ but rattlesnakes, 

 which are far more deadly and dangerous than British vipers, 

 are easily secured in North America by pinning down the 

 neck by a forked stick. 



The only evidence at all approaching to scientific evidence 

 is that of Dr Harley of London, who says that " on one 

 occasion, when fishing in the island of Arran, I suddenly 

 heard children shouting as if in fear, and on inquiry found 

 that they had surprised an adder with a lot of young ones 

 beside her, and that the mother had opened her mouth and 

 the young ones had jumped down her throat." He then goes 

 on to relate that finding the snake had been killed by the 

 blow of a stone, he took it up and put it in his fishing-basket. 

 On the road, moved by curiosity, he took out the snake and 

 opened it with his pocket-knife, when he found within the 

 body of the parent "nine lovely, glistening, scaled young 

 adders, as neatly and closely packed together as if they had 

 been so placed by an experienced hand." Further he tells 

 us that " each was neatly coiled into a perfect but elongated 

 figure of eight, the heads and tails meeting at the central 

 twist of their bodies." 



Dr Harley, perfectly confident that the young adders had 

 been swallowed, now asks, In what part of the mother's body 

 were they ? In the stomach, or in the oviduct ? He decides 

 that they were in neither. " There was not the slightest 

 doubt," he says, " that they had been swallowed ; while the 

 fact of their having been swallowed in the presence of danger 

 showed that the mother did it with the object of protecting 

 them, and not with the object of making a meal of them." 

 Then he argues that they could not be in the stomach, as 

 living tissues could no more than dead ones resist digestion ; 

 furthermore, that they could not live there, as, being air- 

 breathing animals, they could not receive the necessary supply 

 of oxygen ! Then having satisfied himself " that snakes do 

 swallow their young, and that the young were not in the 

 stomach," he " left the animal where it was." 



That must have happened in the year 1857 (a good long 



