AMERICAN SCIENCE CONVENTION ON SNAKES. 



are sometimes swallowed by men, and 

 that they live afterward in the stomach ; 

 and he was glad of the opportunity of 

 ^denouncing that common error. One 

 of the members present added to the 

 testimony of the paper his personal 

 evidence that he had seen ' with his 

 own eyes ' young snakes entering and 

 issuing from the mouth of an older 

 one." 



In this abstract allowance must 

 "be made for incorrectness or in- 

 completeness in reporting; still 

 I may make a few remarks 

 on some points contained in it. I 

 said, on a former occasion, that a 

 string of eggs lying along the back 

 of a black-snake appeared to be con- 

 tained in a roomy chamber distinct 

 from the stomach proper. The 

 young I took out of a garter snake 

 were not lying in a string, like these 

 eggs, but filled up about the middle 

 third of the body, about equally dis- 

 tant from the head and tail not 

 mixed up in any way with the en- 

 trails, but presenting somewhat the 

 appearance of a nest or bag-full of 

 caterpillars found on a tree ; if we 

 imagine it of an elongated shape, 

 and the larvae lying in more than one 

 length longwise. Both the black and 

 garter snakes are beyond question 

 egg-laying or oviparous, and " swal- 

 lowers," for their eggs have been 

 found in the ground in all stages of 

 maturity, and the young have been 

 seen running into and been taken 

 out of the mother, as I have on 

 more than one occasion mentioned. 

 It thus seems odd to be told in the 

 abstract that " all these snakes [in- 

 cluding the garter one] are known 

 to be ovoviviparous, while no well 

 attested case [of swallowing] occurs 

 among the truly oviparous; "and that 

 " it yet remains to be shown that 

 the habit is shared by egg-laying 

 snakes." There is some confusion 

 ' in the paper itself, or in the abstract 

 made of it, on that head. The real 

 value of it is that it proves that 

 " many kinds of snakes swallow 

 their young," and bears out what I 

 said on a former occasion : " I lay 



it down as an axiom that we must 

 hold that all snakes swallow their 

 young till the opposite can be 

 proved of any particular species of 

 them." * In this paper allusion is 

 made to the gastric juice of the 

 mother. On the occasion men- 

 tioned, I said I was under the im- 

 pression that she must have two 

 throats, or one with two passages, 

 one- passage leading to the stomach 

 proper, and the other to the cham- 

 ber that contains the eggs, apparent- 

 ly where the young ones take 

 refuge. We are also told that 

 " twenty-seven [people] saw the 

 young living within the parent, but 

 as they did not see them enter, the 

 testimony [as to their having been 

 swallowed] is at least dubious." 

 How could that be doubted if the 

 young were hatched from eggs de- 

 posited in the ground ? And if the 

 species were viviparous, how could a 

 chain of eggs, in twenty-seven in- 

 stances, change into a stomach full 

 of young, with no remains of the 

 shells of the eggs from which they 

 were hatched, in the face of so 

 many such serpents having been 

 actually seen to swallow their young, 

 to say nothing of the uncertainty 

 of how or where the eggs were 

 hatched ? It would be interesting to 

 know on what authority so many 

 kinds of snakes are classed as vivi- 

 parous. If it is merely because they 

 have been killed with young inside 

 of them, the evidence would not 

 hold good in the face of their swal- 

 lowing their young. I know no 

 way to determine the fact but by 

 taking the eggs out of the snake 

 and examining their condition; 

 and then there would be the 

 question whether the eggs are 

 hatched inside or outside of the 

 mother, or in the act of parturition. 

 As in mathematics we require to 

 know some things to demonstrate 

 others, so in snakes swallowing their 

 young, it is not necessary for a man 



* See page 29. 



