144 CHAPTERS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



which is suddenly straightened out and again as rapidly with- 

 drawn when the reptile strikes. Speaking of the snake's body, 

 the question has often been asked me, What part of the creature 

 is body and what part is tail'! The answer to this is that the 

 body and tail of a snake, although they seem to imperceptibly 

 merge into each other, are, in reality, quite distinct, for the divid- 

 ing line is at the animal's anus, beyond which, on the ventral 

 ,side, the arrangement of the scales is usually different. 



Several times every twelve months most snakes shed their en- 

 tire skin, which latter normally slips off in one unbroken piece. 

 The surfaces of the eyes are included in this " shed," and it is dur- 

 ing this operation that snakes are popularly pronounced to be 

 blind. The brilliantly colored varieties are redoubled in their 

 beauty as the old skin comes away. An adult King snake is truly 

 a lovely object to behold just after the moult, with his new, shin- 

 ing coat of gorgeous black and yellow coloring. 



The accounts of young snakes of certain species running down 

 the throats of their mothers when alarmed, or to escape danger 

 of any kind, are now well authenticated, and such statements 

 can doubtless be taken as true. 



In closing this chapter I would say that of all animals that 

 now live upon the globe, or ever have lived upon the globe, few 

 there are that can boast of having cut a more remarkable figure 

 in written history than can that group of reptiles which for ages 

 have been known as snakes. 



From time immemorial these creatures have been talked about 

 and sung about by nearly all the races of people, both living and 

 departed; their written history, popular and scientific, would to- 

 day make of itself a very large library of many hundreds of vol- 

 umes. Snakes have been shunned and have been widely perse- 

 cuted; have been worshiped, dreaded, despised, and glorified. 

 They have stood as emblems of wisdom, of evil, and of deceit. 

 They have played their part in witchcraft, in medicine, and have 

 been eaten as food. Indeed it would be impossible in our limited 

 space here to one-half enumerate the many-faced phases their 

 history has won, especially in view of the fact that better pens 

 than mine have already done much of this for us. However, 

 science will be well served if young and observing naturalists in 

 this country will intelligently make records of the habits of our 

 snakes, or scientific accounts of their anatomy, geographical dis- 

 tribution, and all else pertaining to their biology. We still need 



