MR. GOSSE ON THE JAMAICA BOA. 



33 



number. In each of these was a 

 young adder, perfectly formed, and 

 enveloped in a glutinous fluid. The 

 little creatures, although they had 

 never seen the light before, raised 

 themselves up and evinced an incli- 

 nation to bite." These eggs were ap- 

 parently ready, or nearly ready, to be 

 laid, or the young hatched, although 

 " enveloped in a glutinous fluid " 

 after being taken out of the eggs, 

 having thus two coverings, as the 

 description would imply. They 

 differed in that respect from those 

 taken by White of Selborne out of 

 another, which were not enveloped in 

 anything; and which makes it remark- 

 able that he was not struck with the 

 phenomenon of a " string of eggs " 

 changing into an " abdomen crowd- 

 ed with young upwards of seven 

 inches in length ;" and could see 

 nothing in it but that " some snakes 

 are actually born alive, being hatch- 

 ed within the body of the mother." 

 This still leaves the question an 

 open one, whether the eggs of the 

 viper are hatched inside or outside 



of the mother, or in the act of par- 

 turition. Mr. Buckland does not 

 say how long the young vipers were, 

 nor the time of year found, to com- 

 pare them with White's, which were 

 taken out on the 4th August. 



The evidence in regard to the 

 hatching of the turtle, or sea-tor- 

 toise, would seem to be that the 

 mother is not present on the occa- 

 sion, but leaves the young to them- 

 selves, although in Figuier's Rep- 

 tiles and Birds we find the follow- 

 ing : " Under the fostering care of 

 their mother those which have 

 escaped the birds of prey on their 

 way to the sea." The same point, 

 I think, requires to be definitely 

 settled in regard to river, land and 

 mud tortoises, which live, deposit 

 their eggs, and hybernate in the 

 same locality, as distinguished from 

 the sea-tortoise, which swims many 

 hundreds of miles from land, and, 

 so far. as known, does not hybernate, 

 for the apparent reason that its 

 tropical or semi-tropical habitat does 

 not require it. 



MR. GOSSE ON THE JAMAICA BOA SWALLOWING 

 HER YOUNG* 



MR. GOSSE, in his Natural- 

 ist's Sojourn in Jamaica, 

 1851, page 314, in describing the 

 yellow boa in that island, says that 

 it commonly attains a length of 

 eight or ten feet, and a diameter of 

 two and a half inches in the thick- 

 est part of the body, and alludes to 

 others of the lengths of six and nine 

 feet by measure. All his authori- 

 ties black as well as white agree 

 that this snake lays eggs, and hatches 

 them by incubation, which he 

 proved by personal experiment. 

 Six eggs were brought to him, 

 which were taken out of a large 

 chamber, well lined with trash, 

 3 



in the centre of a low but wide 

 heap of pulverised earth, in which 

 the yam tuber is planted, discovered 

 by the snake crawling out of a hole 

 in the side of it just wide enough 

 to admit her. These eggs were 

 "long oval, i-Jin. by -J- in., plump 

 when first discovered, but now, 

 through exposure to. the air, 

 shrunken in at the sides."" One of 

 them he opened, and found a snake 

 in it, comparatively lifeless, owing, 

 apparently, to the length of expo- 

 sure to which it had been subjected, 



* Dated June 26th,. 1873,; printed 

 August 30th. 



