March 17, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



387 



swallowing them whole. I did not see a frog 

 lose one, and I saw one frog catch and eat 

 five. The butterflies seemed to make no effort 

 to get away from them. Occasionally one 

 would alight upon a frog's back. In about half 

 an hour all but one of the butterflies had been 

 caught. The frogs did not try to catch that 

 one. It flew away, and soon three of the frogs 

 went back into the water. The fourth one was 

 apparently too " stuffed " to move. 



For many days after this occurrence I 

 watched the watering place, hoping that I 

 might be able to get a photograph of the frogs 

 and butterflies, but I did not see them together 

 again. 



I have consulted the best authorities on frogs, 

 and I do not find such an instance recorded. 

 Alice Mavourneen Mallonee 



Stratton, Me. 



the alleged instinctive fear of snakes 

 To THE Editor of Science: Mr. T. B. Dab- 

 ney's interesting letter on the " Serpent In- 

 stinct in Man," appearing in your issue of the 

 seventh, proposes an argument substantially as 

 follows: The fear of serpents in man is prac- 

 tically universal; therefore it must be instinc- 

 tive. If instinctive, it must survive from a 

 period when the serpent was a menace to the 

 perpetuation of the human race. But such a 

 period can only have existed before man had 

 clothing. Therefore, it existed before his evo- 

 lution from the brute was complete. But the 

 principal locality in which man, at such a 

 stage of his history, would have bad cause to 

 fear extinction by serpents, is India. There- 

 fore India is probably the cradle of the hu- 

 man race. 



To what extent the successive conclusions 

 are supported by their premises it is not my 

 present purpose to discuss. I have but one 

 point to make, and that is that the fear of 

 serpents is probably not instinctive at all. I 

 believe it to be the result of erroneous educa- 

 tion in childhood, perhaps accentuated by a 

 certain timidity with regard to wdld animals 

 in general, resulting from the protected habits 

 of civilized life. 



That the fear of snakes is very general is a 



fact painfully present to many who, like my- 

 self, are studying herpetology with a view to 

 protecting our useful snakes from extermina- 

 tion, and our country from the incalculable 

 losses to agriculture which would thence en- 

 sue. The desire to justify the aforesaid fear 

 is mainly responsible for the persistence of .t, 

 mass of absurd superstitions about even the 

 commonest species of snakes. But the preva- 

 lence of this attitude is not, in my judgment, 

 sufficient reason for attributing it to an in- 

 stinct of seLf-preservation which was the prop- 

 erty of a supposititious brute ancestor of man, 

 and has consequently defied the efforts of edu- 

 cation to dislodge it, at least when there is 

 question of first impulses. As a matter of 

 fact, there is an equally general aversion to 

 toads, lizards, spiders, worms and other ani- 

 mals possessing unpleasant qualities. The 

 sudden presentation of such objects produces 

 even the " panic of horror " alluded to, in 

 quite as many instances as the sight of the 

 serpent. And yet, none of the other creatures 

 mentioned can at any time have menaced the 

 existence of the human race. 



If Mr. Dabney's arguments were quite con- 

 clusive, he would be well warranted in select- 

 ing India as the birthplace of herpetophobia. 

 He is quite correct as to the mortality an- 

 nually due to serpents in that country. Its 

 immediate cause is well known to every one 

 acquainted with conditions there. The na- 

 tives of India are frequently bitten by venom- 

 ous snakes because, despite all the efforts of 

 their European masters, they insist upon going 

 barefoot, even when otherwise well clad. If 

 it was the adoption of clothing which first 

 made our primitive ancestor realize that he 

 had an even chance in the struggle for exist- 

 ence, one would surely expect the essential 

 constituent of costume in India to be a pair 

 of boots, whatever else might be wanting. 



But there is positive evidence against the 

 theory that the dread of snakes is instinctive. 

 First, there is the common tendency of young 

 children to play with a bright-colored snake, 

 as they would with any toy. An innate horror 

 of snakes as an attribute of the human species 

 is quite inconsistent with such a fact as this. 



