348 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



harmless creature before ; and that close observer, the late Mr. 

 John Keast Lord, says, " From oft-repeated experiments, I feel 

 sure that it is impossible, by any amount of provocation, to induce 

 the Ringed Snake to strike or make any attempt to bite." Mr. 

 Lord, of course, had not made his experiments with an incubating 

 Snake, but it is difficult to find a reason for their never biting 

 under ordinary circumstances, as they certainly have the where- 

 withal to a comparatively formidable extent, and are prone to 

 excessive timidity. My little natrlx seemed not to object to the 

 other serpents passing" over her ; but, unfortunately, she lay in an 

 angle, and as many of them were much larger than herself, they 

 frequently displaced her and scattered the eggs by forcing them- 

 selves between her folds and the side of the cage. After such an 

 occurrence she appeared to make some effort to collect the eggs 

 together once more in a compact mass, throwing her body around 

 the outlying ones, and perhaps constricting the coil a little so as 

 to draw them towards the centre. I had seen this action described 

 in the case of an incubating pythoness, and was therefore on the 

 look-out for it ; but here the evidence of such an intent, if it 

 really existed, was not well-marked, and it may be fanciful to 

 ascribe such a purpose to those movements. In consequence of 

 this oft-recurring disturbance, I made several attempts to isolate 

 her by interposing a barrier between her corner and the rest of 

 the cage, by inverting boxes over her, and various other protective 

 measures — all of which failed, owing to the awkward construction 

 of the reptilium. Finding them of no avail against the intrusion 

 of her cage -mates, I removed her with the eggs en masse on the 

 evening of the 18th, and placed them in a compartment which I 

 had securely partitioned off in a box containing a couple of boas 

 — which box was of course constantly heated by artificial means. 

 The compartment was partly covered with moss, but seeing that 

 she herself had elected to deposit her eggs on the bare woodwork 

 in the first instance, in preference to moss, I acted in accordance 

 with what I presumed to be her taste now, and laid her on the 

 boarded floor. An hour afterwards she forsook her charge, and 

 though I altered the conditions in a dozen different ways in 

 succession, she never returned to them, or appeared to take the 

 slightest further notice of them. 



Why did this snake incubate ? Another belonging to the 

 same species laid fifty-one eggs in the same cage a few days 



