MR. FRANK BVCKLAND Off THE VIPER. 



'95 



pregnant with eggs, near the point 

 of hatching or birth, and says : 



"In the engraving will be found a 

 drawing by Mr. Bergeau, the artist, giv- 

 ing a representation of a viper that has 

 been supposed to have swallowed its 

 young." 



He here finds young that had not 

 been born, and gives that as a tri- 

 umphant reason that vipers do not 

 swallow their young ! He might have 

 dissected various vipers, showing 

 eggs ranging from the condition in 

 which the foetus could not be dis- 

 covered with the naked eye, to the 

 time of birth, and said that these 

 dissections prove the same thing ! 



A scientific, or even common- 

 sense, naturalist will not necessarily 

 stoop so low as to demand ocular 

 proof of snakes swallowing their 

 young. He ascertains that vipers 

 pass their young with a covering on 

 them the original egg attenuated 

 to the last degree which breaks as 

 it leaves the mother, or immediately 

 after it touches the ground ; and 

 are killed with young inside of 

 them, sometimes upwards of seven 

 inches long, and divested of a cov- 

 ering ; and he concludes at once 

 that the young were swallowed. 

 And his opinion is confirmed by 

 the fact of oviparous snakes being 

 killed with young inside of them 

 that were hatched in the soil, which 

 proves b.eyond doubt that they must 

 have been swallowed. Ocular testi- 

 mony confirms the opinion in both 

 instances that the young were swal- 

 lowed. 



As I have already said, about half 

 of Contributions to Natural History 

 appeared in Land and Water, and 

 the other half were in Mr. Buck- 

 land's possession for several months 

 before publication. Among these 

 last was a paper read by Prof. G. 

 Brown Goode, before the American 

 Science Convention, in 1873, in 

 which was found the positive evi- 

 dence of nearly a hundred people, 

 from various parts of the United 



States, as to various kinds of snakes 

 swallowing their young; several 

 scientific gentlemen present testify- 

 ing of their own knowledge to the 

 fact, particularly Prof. Sydney J. 

 Smith, of the Sheffield Scientific 

 School, Yale College, who " added to 

 the testimony of the paper his per- 

 sonal evidence that he had seen, 

 with his own eyes, young snakes 

 entering and issuing from the mouth 

 of an older one." He was also in 

 possession of an appendix to the 

 work, bearing the title of Mr. 

 Frank Auckland and White of Sel- 

 borne, that answered by anticipa- 

 tion all that he has advanced in his 

 article under review. All the evi- 

 dence contained in these counted 

 for nothing in Mr. Buckland's esti- 

 mation. He says that " for some- 

 thing like thirty years " he has 

 been labouring to ascertain whether 

 or not vipers swallow their young ; 

 so that we have his own evidence 

 to satisfy us that during all that 

 time he has been merely trifling 

 with the subject. 



In his edition of White's Natural 

 History of Selborne Mr. Buckland, 

 as we have seen, says that <4 a cor- 

 respondence on this subject takes 

 place in Land and Water almost 

 every year." This was ^illustrated 

 by J. A. D., on the i6th of Decem- 

 ber, 1876, when he said that he saw 

 a viper swallow her young ; and on 

 the same day by Wm. G. Gard, 

 who said : 



" I can be under no delusion what- 

 ever about the case. I saw the mother 

 and young ones ; I saw the young ones 

 enter her mouth ; and I saw them re- 

 leased from her stomach by its being 

 ripped open by my father, and I saw 

 them killed." 



On the 3oth Francis Edwards 

 testified to the phenomenon having 

 been seen by Isaac Mitchell, a farm 

 labourer ; and on the 6th of Janu- 

 ary, 1877, Mr. Gard, in reply to 

 some meaningless cavilling of "Law- 

 yer C." about the fact being " im- 



