478 OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS, ETC. 



SNAKES' SLOUGH. 



" There the snake throws her enamell'd skin." 



SHAKSPEARE, Mids. Night's Dream. 



ABOUT the middle of this month (September) we found 

 in a field near a hedge the slough of a large snake, 

 which seemed to have been newly cast. From circum- 

 stances it appeared as if turned wrong side outward, 

 and as drawn off backward, like a stocking or woman's 

 glove. Not only the whole skin, but scales from the 

 very eyes, are peeled off, and appear in the head of the 

 slough like a pair of spectacles. The reptile, at the 

 time of changing his coat, had entangled himself intri- 

 cately in the grass and weeds, so that the friction of the 

 stalks and blades might promote this curious shifting 

 of his exuviae. 



Lubrica serpens 



IX u it in spinis vestem." LUCRET. 



It would be a most entertaining sight could a person 

 be an eye-witness to such a feat, and see the snake in 

 the act of changing his garment. As the convexity of 

 the scales of the eyes in the slough is now inward, that 

 circumstance alone is a proof that the skin has been 

 turned : not to mention that now the present inside is 

 much darker than the outer. If you look through the 

 scales of the snake's eyes from the concave side, viz. as 

 the reptile used them, they lessen objects much. Thus 

 it appears from what has been said, that snakes crawl 

 out of the mouth of their own sloughs, and quit the tail 

 part last, just as eels are skinned by a cook maid. 

 While the scales of the eyes are growing loose, and a 

 new skin is forming, the creature, in appearance, must 

 be blind, and feel itself in an awkward uneasy situa- 

 tion 1 ^ 



19 I have seen many sloughs or skins of snakes entire, after they have 

 cast them off; and once in particular I remember to have found one of 



