374 BLUE MOUNTAINS. 



THE CRESTED SNAKE. 



Mr. Hill writes me thus: — "December, 1845. 

 There are two living attractions in the Blue Moun- 

 tains, a Crested Snake, and a sweetly mysterious 



singing bird called the Solitaire The 



Snake is identical with one I was told of in Spanish 

 Haiti, having a red crest and wattles, very much 

 resembling the head of a cock. Strange fictions were 

 invented of its crowing like the cock, and stealing 

 into hen-roosts, and by this deception, when it was 

 coiled up, and nothing but its crested head seen, 

 surprising the poultry on the perch, and devouring 

 them. The Spaniards narrated to me these parti- 

 culars, with the words, ' II canta como un Gallop — 

 and our people speak of it as crowing like a cock. 

 Certainly it is the most wonderful serpent since the 

 days that Eve was deceived in Paradise *, if it has 

 a voice so much approaching to distinct if not arti- 

 culate sounds. 



" I believe there is a Crested Snake known here, 

 I only reject the cock-crow story." 



that the motion of the scales brings to view minute evanescent spots 

 on the body, chiefly on the neck. The eyes are very beautiful, like 

 some gems of a pale lustre, cloudei Robinson found each of the 

 two rows of caudal scuta to contain 173, = 346 in all, more than 

 double the number assigned by Linnceus to any of his species. 

 * " On his rear, 



Circular base of rising folds, that tower'd 



Fold above fold, a surging maze ! his head 



Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes ; 



"With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect 



Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 



Floated redundant." Par. Lost, ix. 497. 



