THE VIPER, OR ADDER. 81 



in the morning the young ones had re-appeared, 

 and the mother was as lean as at first. 



" Mr. Henry Doubleday, of Epping, supplies the 

 following information : ' A person whose name 

 is English, a good observer, and one, as it were 

 brought up in natural history under Mr. Double- 

 day's tuition, once happened to set his foot on 

 a lizard in the forest, and while the lizard was 

 thus held down by his foot, he distinctly saw 

 three young ones run out of her mouth ; struck 

 by such a phenomenon, he killed and opened the 

 old one, and found two other young ones which 

 had been injured when he trod on her/ In both 

 these instances," Mr. Newman adds, " the 

 narrators are of that class who do know what to 

 observe, and how to observe it ; and the facts, 

 whatever explanation they may admit, are not to 

 be dismissed as the result of imagination or mis- 

 taken observation."* 



We must confess that our own incredulity has 

 been so staggered of late by these and similar 

 instances, that we are by no means disposed to 

 deny, because we cannot fully comprehend, the 

 mystery of the process. It is admitted by some 

 physiologists, if not by all, that there is no sound 

 physiological reason against such an occurrence ; 

 and, until we are convinced by better arguments< 



* The Zoologist, p. 2269. 

 G 



