375 



THE SNAKE AND ITS NATURAL FOES. 



By 



Captain F. Wall, I.M.S., O.M.Z.S. 



(Bead before the Bombay Natural History Society on 28th June, 1906.) 

 The position of the snake in the zoological world is a most unenviable 

 one. How numerous are its enemies will be seen from the fact that it 

 suffers destruction from almost the whole brute creation, beginning with 

 the most exalted man, and passing down the animal scale to creatures 

 as lowly as those included under the division Insecta. It would be 

 hard, indeed, to say from whom it suffers the greatest persecution, but 

 I will enumerate some of its enemies commencing with man, aud 

 proceeding down the animal scale. 



Cla ss — Mamma I ia. 



Order. — Primates. — One of its most inveterate foes is undoubtedly 

 man, who even in his most exalted state of civilisation learns almost 

 from the cradle to recoil from its dreaded form, and who from the time 

 that he acquires sufficient strength aud courage unmercifully slaughters 

 innocent and culpable alike. 



Love of slaughter. — One finds abundant illustrations of civilised man's 

 wanton brutality in books of sport, travel and adventure. Mr. E. 0. 

 Donovan is responsible for the following unabashed confession.* Speak- 

 ing of the ruins of an old city near Marina Khan Tepe near the Mergab 

 river which was infested with snakes, he says : " We spent half an hour 

 hunting these up, and killing them with our whips, in consonance with 

 the invariable Turcoman custom." Miss Hopley tells usf how a farmer 

 in Wales at the end of one September was removing a heap of manure 

 when he came upon a bed of snakes and slowworms. 352 were killed 

 with thousands of eggs in clusters. From this motive alone — the love 

 of slaughter — enormous numbers of snakes perish annually at the hands 

 of civilised man. Scientific motives. — Again, civilised man from 

 purely venial motives contributes to the yearly death-rate in his 

 scientific researches in the departments of zoology, comparative 

 anatomy, physiology, and toxicology, so that many hundreds of snakes 

 annually reach our numerous laboratories and museums. The depreda- 



* '• The Merv Oasis," p. 2C9. 

 t " Snakes," p. 167. 



