Aug. 21, 1885.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



masses of gas, and for this reason we do not realise to what an 

 extent such lamps of rare matter hold together and travel. 



In 1882 I addressed to K. a speculation as follows. After a 

 Tiolent westerly pale I sometimca remark here for days after an 

 entirely novel odour like primeval forests. I have conferred 

 with natives, and, as usual, they give an explanation which cannot 

 be the true one — i.e. that it comes from kelp-burning at Noirmantier, 

 10 miles off. I point out that we almost always have the wind just 

 from-that quarter— S.W.—«'»iftou« any smell— (2) that when we 

 have this new perfume, it is after a W. gale of exceptional force — 

 (3) that the smell is not kelp, but pines, and general verdure. 



My suggestion to K. was that this smell had come all the 

 way from America. If caught in the centre of a cyclone, I see 

 no reason why it should not pass the Atlantic, kept entire by its 

 very rotation. I instanced two remarkable cases of cohesion of 

 odorous gas. At noon on a calm sunny winter's day I passed four 

 or five young ladies seated on a stone bench. I noticed as I passed 

 an abundance of strong perfume. They would not stay there 

 long ; an hour, at most. Yet, when I repassed after dark, I found 

 the perfume quite as strong about the bench. On the same spot a 

 few years before I passed and repassed several times through an 

 invisible cloud of wood-smoke, deliciously odorous. This must 

 have come from a good distance, for there were no inhabited houses 



My letter was not noticed in any way. It no donbt seemed mere 

 extravagance. 



In June 1884 a friend lent me a N.Y. or Detroit paper (which 

 I regret tohavelost) wherein it was reported that a ship's crew had 

 been almost suffocated by meeting, 400 miles from the nearest laud, 

 a dense bank of wood-smoke. If smoke will travel 500 miles, why 

 not 2,000 for a backwoods bouquet ? 



Last night on going out I felt myself in the poisonous fumes of 

 a lime-kiln. There is one a mile to windward. In half-an-hour 

 there was no more smell. The cloud of gas had travelled on. 



I have stood on Killiuey Hill on a windy day, and seen Dublin 

 quite free of smoke, while over Howth and Sutton there hung a 

 black pall, which was the smoke of Dublin, detached. I have smelt 

 the smoke of Dublin twenty miles off, and have been told 

 that sea-foam has been found in the centre of Ireland. At 

 Brompton after long-prevailing E. wind I have found the air not 

 better than that of Fleet-street. This might turn the scale in 

 favour of death, in the case of a very delicate sufferer; but I have 

 always found physicians calmly supercilious about any such obscure 

 causes of variation in strength. " 



SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKIN-CASTING OF SSAKES. 

 [1886]— During a service out here of thirty odd years, I have 

 come across snakes, I may say, by the thousand ; and I have met 

 the most unlikely localities, and most extraordinary 



Some of the latter they could not possibly have reached with- 

 out using their ventral scales to assist them in climbing — e.ij., a 

 mud wail ; or, as the pedal-scales of lizards to occasion a 

 vacuum, and enable the individual to ascend the interior of a 

 glass jar. 



The most extraordinary locality was finding a poisonous snake 

 coiled up between the seat and lid of a dak-bungrilow night-stool ; 

 and the next, the double roof of my brougham ; and dropping a 

 cobra from the sleeve of my wife's velvet jacket, which had been 

 hanging on a dress-stand.* 



And the localities in which I have found the exuvia? of snakes 

 have been equally singular. Sometimes I have found them amongst 

 the entanglements of a rose-bush, and entire, too. The krait, a 

 small and very poisonous species, is a snake of literary attainments, 

 and affects book-cases, and I have found its skin on the top of a 

 shelf of books ; I have found a cobra-skin left as a card on the 

 floor of my drawing-room; I have met it stretched out on the 

 broken brick-ballast of the railway. 



Apropos to this, it was an old tr:u!iii<iii lu.i !» ir t!.;.i .n:,i.cj 

 abhorred rough places, and, there run , - ,i ( 

 rounded by broken stones or briil -. I 



snakes in these so-called prott-clril I i. ;' ^^,l .: 



lusion, and that animals which li:i\i' im Nl--, wui'^'-. . r .utii:,. 



they can progress as easily akmg iln' I'.u-f d u Hiinl «.ill as (.n 

 the ground. 



But I am wandering from my subJLct the cxiui.u uC tiKikea, or 

 skin-casting. 



The books say that because the scale and comeiB plates are 



* [My own fathc 

 stationed in India, f 

 hisllutol-En.] 



always found inverted, this wonderful process of exuviation must 

 commence at the tail and end with the head. 



To ex]ilain the book process I must resort to a rough diagram. 

 Having shrunk within its skin, and thus loosened it, that around 

 the jaws cracks, and the snake begins to wriggle forwards, the tail 

 adhesion being as yet perfect ; half-way through the process the 

 book position is shown roughly in Fig. 1 (the dots indicating the 

 skin), and it can be imitated by passing a needle with a knotted 



Kg. 2, 



Fig. 1. 



thread inwards through the tip of tho finger of an inflated glove, 

 and then pulling gently on the thread, as shown in Fig. 2. The 

 process of inversion goes on gradually, and ends by the tail passing 

 through the skin of the mouth; it is then detached and the 

 exuvium is left behind. But how this extraordinary detachment; 

 takes place, the books don't say. As the result of this process 

 the mouth of the skin is left exactly opposite to the point of 

 exit of the sn.ake— i.e., if the snake began exuviating with ita 

 face to the East, the mouth of the skin will point to the west. 



All this is too complicated for the real simplicity of Nattire'a 

 work ; exuviation is rendered necessary by the snake having out- 

 grown its skin, which is therefore dispensed with, and the process 

 is exactly similar to that seen, say, among silkworms, onlj that; 

 in their case the exuvium is left behind crumpled up, and not 

 straightened out. I have never seen anguine exuviation, but, 

 judging from that of caterpillars, the loose skin is slowly thrown 

 off by a series of undulatory movements. 



Charmers, out here, carry about their snakes, cobras generally, 

 and sometimes pythons, in circular baskets, and when skin-changing 

 comes on (at the commencement of the cold weather), the poor 

 creatures are in great straits, and can only relievo themselves by 

 rubbing off flakes of epidermis against the sides of the basket. 

 In the natural process, the inversion of the corneaj and scale- 

 plates, is, I believe, due partly to cuticular contraction in drying, 

 and partly to atmospheric pressure. E. F. HcicHixsoN, M.D. 



Pachmari, July 5, 1885. 



LETTERS EEGEIVED AND SHORT ANSWERS. 

 Not th( 



Agricol. 

 beginning to end. — Kkv. L.i( 

 one such table is already in 

 to 891 of Chambers's "D 

 "Book of Almanacs," &c., 

 in capital letters, which co 

 dence Columns. — AuGUsirs 



of so many of such cstablis' 

 to agree with him. 



;litest. It is stuff and nonsense from 

 II. EUMSEY. Thanks, but more than 

 istence. Vide (for example) pp. 886 

 ;riptive Astronomy," De Morgan's 

 ;. Kindly note, too, the paragraph, 

 icludes those heading the Correspou- 



J. Haev 



the si 



t fori 



3 that ther 

 utions in London and 

 1 view of the collapse 

 t he will get but few 

 . Do you seriously 

 in can, or will, take 

 inism? Mr. Wallace 

 contemptuous silence 

 nd the acting editor. 

 ae, and 1 may as well 

 J to mo that he has 

 as a friend of mine 

 tried to insult that 

 this, simply because 



— Db. Lewixs. 1 have n( 



