ii2 CREDIBILITY OF EVIDENCE. 



when any unprejudiced reasoner finds that a favorite theory is contradicted by the 

 testimony of even one trustworthy observer, much more when the united accounts of 

 many competent judges all tend to the same point, he feels that it is time for him to 

 reflect whether, however perfect may be the form, of his syllogism, there may not be 

 something wrong with his premises. Reasoning is more liable to falsity than the senses 

 to deception. It is easy enough to talk of a flagrant violation of the laws of nature, 

 but before we venture to do so it is as well to be quite certain that we are sure of the 

 full extent of those laws. Who is there, even among the most learned, that can define 

 the full working of even a single known law and its ever-varying action under different 

 circumstances ? And who can venture to say that some hitherto unrecognized law 

 may not be in existence, which, if known and acknowledged, would account for the 

 circumstances which at present seem so unaccountable ? 



In the second place, if we are not to depend upon the testimony of our acknowledged 

 senses, on what are we to depend for the whole of natural philosophy, astronomy, or, 

 indeed, any other established science ? It is simply on the testimony of our senses 

 that all existing sciences are founded, and even analogous reasoning is not admitted 

 as valid proof of an asserted fact. There is hardly any new discovery which does not 

 destroy some old and respectable theory, and give entirely a new idea of the law of 

 nature on which it depends. 



The operation of the senses is in itself one of the known laws of nature, by which we 

 discover facts and through which we are enabled to exercise our reasoning faculties. 

 A human being without the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, would be the dullest 

 animal on the face of the earth, and as long as the privation lasted, would hold a lower 

 place than a sponge or a medusa. If we once acknowledge that the evidence of the 

 senses is not to be believed, we must reject the whole of the physical sciences. Astro- 

 nomical observations, chemical experiments, geological surveys, anatomical researches, 

 and the whole of natural history, must be at once thrown aside if such a theory is to be 

 consistently carried out; and for the same reason, the courts of law must be abolished, 

 depending as they do on the personal observations of human beings, mostly illiterate, 

 and often ignorant to a degree. Repeated observations are the only method of ascer- 

 taining the laws of nature, and if they show that certain events, however strange they 

 may appear, have really occurred, they surely prove, not that the senses of the witnesses 

 were deceived, but that another law of nature has been discovered. 



Were the Viper the only creature of whom such an act is related, the phenomenon 

 would be less worthy of belief ; but there is hardly a poisonous Snake of any country by 

 whom the same act is not said to be performed, the narrators not being professed 

 naturalists with a theory, but travellers, hunters, and settlers, casually noting the result 

 of their personal experience. I cannot but think that the accumulated testimony of many 

 trustworthy persons, acting independently of each other, accustomed to observation, and 

 mostly unaware of the importance that would be afterwards attached to their words, is 

 entitled to some respect, and affords legitimate grounds to the truth-seeker, not for 

 contemptuous denial, but for further investigation. 



Several observant inhabitants of the Forest of Dean assert that both sexes assume 

 this protective habit, the male as well as the female receiving the young into the mouth 

 in cases of sudden danger. In those localities, the head of the Viper is always chopped 

 off as soon as the reptile is killed, and the Viper-catchers say that in such cases the 

 young Vipers frequently are seen crawling out of the severed neck. 



I certainly never saw the Viper act in this manner, but I have had very few opportu- 

 nities of watching this reptile in a wild state and noting its habits ; whereas those who 

 spend their lives in the forests, and especially those men who add to their income by 

 catching or killing these reptiles, speak of the reception of the young into the mouth of 

 the parent, as a fact too well known to be disputed. 



It has been objected that the young would be consumed by the gastric juice of the 

 parent one of the most sensible objections that has been made. But this assertion 

 has been invalidated by the researches of able anatomists and experimentalists, such as 

 Mr. F. T. Buckland, etc., who have discovered, by careful dissection, two facts ; the one, 

 that the young may be concealed within the expansile body of the parent without 



