TREATMENT OF SNAKES IN CAPTIVITY. 109 



reptiles bore a high commercial value, the place might have 

 proved a capital speculation as a nursery ; the eggs deposited in 

 the rotten leaves were hatched freely, and in the spring swarms 

 of little serpents might be seen about the stones on a sunny day, 

 or surprised in pursuit of tadpoles and newly-emancipated frogs 

 after dark. And from these young ones was gathered perhaps 

 the only result of the costly experiment — an answer to the 

 question often asked. Why are snakes not more numerous ? 



All these creatures are very prolific, whether ovo-viviparous 

 or oviparous. Boas, vipers, and various colubers belonging to 

 the former class which have bred in menageries, have given birth 

 to batches of fifteen, twenty, thirty, or even a greater number ; 

 and in those cases where less have been produced, there have 

 usually been indications to show that many more ova have never 

 reached maturity, as they probably would have done had the 

 mother remained undisturbed in her native wilds. Our common 

 English Snake lays from twenty to fifty eggs at a time, and it 

 may reasonably be conjectured that most, if not all, that are laid 

 are hatched ; the parent's instinct leads it to deposit them in 

 some situation favourable for their germination, and the eggs 

 themselves are not exposed to the depredations that imperil the 

 contents of a bird's nest. Yet the snake is a reptile com- 

 paratively scarce in our midst, and does not increase fifty, 

 twenty, or even twofold in localities where they are unmolested 

 by the hand of man. My friend found an explanation of the 

 fact in tbe many animals which devour them greedily, in addition 

 to their well-known enemies, mongooses, pigs, storks, and pike. 

 Any bird or fish that will eat a worm will take a snake of 

 corresponding size ; and, curiously enough, the very things upon 

 which they feed when they are big enough, seem to prey upon 

 them with an avidity which one might fancy inspired by an 

 impulse of self-preservation — thus, frogs, lizards, and tritons 

 which had been intended to furnish the larder, took a dietetic 

 revenge on the early snakelings. Toads, hedgehogs, and even 

 slow-worms made away with them, while flocks of birds by day, 

 and rats, stoats, weasels, polecats, and other small deer at night 

 were undoubtedly attracted to that happy hunting-ground, to the 

 notable diminution of its ophidian population. After a while 

 snakes began to appear outside the enclosure, about the lawn 

 and shrubberies, and it was supposed, since not the tiniest 



