SNAKE S SWALLO WING THEIR YO UNG. 



and how many escaped, and how did 

 they escape ? What was the length 

 of the mother and progeny when 

 caught ? How have they at vari- 

 ous times been housed or kept? 

 If exposed to the air, how did they 

 appear in warm, wet, and cold 

 weather? How watered and fed, 

 and particularly, how the young 

 ones were watered and fed ? How 

 has the mother behaved towards the 



family and the family towards her, 

 and how towards her keeper and 

 others, and the same in regard to 

 the young ? with a detailed account 

 of all other particulars noticed of 

 the mother and young since their 

 capture. Did the old one shed her 

 skin, and, if so, how and when? 

 What are the seasons during which 

 people from London do and do not 

 catch vipers ? 



SNAKES SWALLOWING THEIR YOUNG* 



"N 1 



O ox casts its hide so that it 

 can be picked up and made 

 boots of, no horse swallows a mouth- 

 ful as wide if not twice as wide as 

 its body, and no sow on the ap- 

 proach of danger receives her in- 

 fantile grunters inside of her ; there- 

 fore no snake does any of these 

 things." " If I were told that a 

 snake receives her young inside of 

 her, I would not believe it on any 

 evidence, for the reason that I do 

 not understand how it could be 

 done, or what purpose it would 

 serve." 



Apply this style of reasoning to 

 the communication of D. of York- 

 town, Virginia, printed in Land and 

 Water on the ist February, and 

 you have a pretty fair description 

 of what is the production of one 

 who is evidently not an American. 

 He advances nothing of his own 

 knowledge nor of that of others. 

 Indeed he says, " I am not familiar 

 with the supposed young-swallowing 

 snakes " a sufficient reason for 

 him to have kept silent on the sub- 

 ject ; but he adds, " I have often ob- 

 served other kinds" without say- 

 ing what kinds, or what he has no- 

 ticed of them. I doubt not he has 

 seen snakes in a field, or crossing a 

 road, or along a fence, but that 



seems to be the extent of his know- 

 ledge of them. His ideas have evi- 

 dently been culled from printed 

 matter, and intermixed with crude 

 suppositions of his own, and then 

 put forth in a manner that entitles 

 him to little ceremony on being' 

 taken notice of, particularly when he 

 speaks of the "mist that surrounds 

 myself and others in the matter of 

 snakes," basing his remarks on the 

 detailed and circumstantial evi- 

 dence of several people on snakes 

 swallowing their young, contained 

 in my paper printed on the 2ist 

 December. The affidavits of twen- 

 ty people of the highest credibility 

 as to the fact would apparently have 

 no effect on him. He is evidently 

 one of those people who will dis- 

 pute anything, and contradict any- 

 one, like a man I knew who con- 

 tradicted even death (for he was 

 not dying, not he) till death came 

 along and contradicted him. 



He says that the egg-laying spe- 

 cies, like the American black-snake 

 (and he makes no exceptions), are 

 never seen in company with their 

 young, which are never found in- 

 side of them (so far as he knows), 

 and that they abandon their eggs 



* Dated February aid, 1873. 



