88 GILPIN ON THE SERPENTS OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



duced from eggs, need and receive some nourishment and care from 

 the mother during infancy, and are received in times of danger, or 

 perhaps for conveyance, into her stomach, is as well established as 

 any fact in nature. This also gives to the order Reptilia the higher 

 attributes of parental affection. 



It would need some apology for enlarging on facts, no doubt 

 old and well known long since, were it not for the persistent dis- 

 belief of some eminent British Naturalists — a disbelief to which 

 is added an insinuation of its being a trick or hoax, although they 

 well know that the Squalidas, a lower order, possess it. This I 

 have verified myself, having cut youug dog-fish from the mother's 

 belly, and keeping them alive some days. Couch " British Fishes" 

 also gives instances, and our own fishermen affirm it. Future 

 observers will be rewarded by witnessing our salamanders as well 

 as our snakes, watching over their chaplet of leathery eggs, feeding 

 their young, and both protecting and coaching them by their own 

 bodies. 



I have never identified the power of our snakes in emitting vocal 

 sounds. All observers unite in the mother's giving a warning call 

 to her young ; and when camping on long September nights by 

 the lake side, one hears a night long call — very peculiar, very 

 froggy, but elongated. This your Indians tell you is a snake. I 

 have thought this their nuptial call. The wading birds and the 

 frogs are all now silent, their summer gone, whilst the snake season 

 of hatching being deferred to the middle of August, might make 

 this late season their time of pairing. 



Our arctic climate but ill accords with this child of the sun. 

 Grey colours deck him, nor can our slanting sun rays nourish him 

 to the huge proportions of the tropic, or concentrate his poison to 

 their deadly power ; yet slow as his action comparatively is, deliber- 

 ate as his rustle through the dried grass is, his old historical name, 

 his obscure attributes, used of old in true religion and false enchant- 

 ment, as well as his present, extreme abstemiousness joined to an 

 extremer gluttony, and his magnificent repose, the extremities so 

 coiled, that the sleepless eye and forked tongue of the centre guards 

 all, a very type of a citadel, will make him a fascinating study to all 

 for all time. 



