Reptiles. 6983 



darting about and frequently resting on the old church-tower by the Cheese Marl ; 

 they seemed tiied and resting after their long journey. September 21st: hundreds of 

 swallows resting on the heaah.— Matthew Hutchinson ; Blackhealh, Kent. 



The Snake Stone. By Edward Newman. 



I am rejoiced to find in Mr. Gosse an advocate for inquiry into the 

 long-accepted belief in certain natural phenomena which we cannot 

 test by the evidence of our senses, as we sit in our well-warmed 

 museums, surrounded by the trophies of the bird-stuffer's imagination. 

 The belief in what we see is far more dangerous than the belief care- 

 fully deduced from evidence of what we cannot see. Many a stuffed 

 owl is more improbable than a sea serpent: a snake stone is a 

 valuable truth by the side of a British black woodpecker, the skeleton 

 of a mermaid or a talking fish. I have often been astonished at the 

 ridicule thrown over facts that we cannot understand. Men of 

 learning who laugh at a phenomenon they have not seen always 

 remind me of giggling girls who titter when they hear two persons 

 speak any language but their own : the cause of cachination is 

 the same, simple ignorance. The 'Zoologist' shall always be open 

 to discussions on either of the subjects mentioned by Mr. Gosse, and 

 it gives me great pleasure in this number to identify a sea serpent, and 

 to prove, from the evidence of a witness whose veracity is un- 

 questioned, the valuable properties of the snake stone. I quote 

 Sir Emerson Tennant's ' Ceylon.' 



" The use of the Pambo-Kaloo or snake stone, as a remedy in cases 

 of wounds by venomous serpents, has probably been communicated 

 to the Singalese by the itinerant snake-charmers who resort to the 

 island from the coast of Coromandel ; and more than one well- 

 authenticated instance of its successful application has been told to 

 me by persons who had been eye-witnesses to what they described. 

 On one occasion, in March, 1854, a friend of mine was riding, with 

 some other civil officers of the Government, along a jungle path in 

 the vicinity of Bintenne, when they saw one of two Samils, who were 

 approaching them, suddenly dart into the forest and return, holding, 

 in both hands, a cobra de capello which he had seized by the head 

 and tail. He called to his companion for assistance to place it 

 in their covered basket, but, in doing this, he handled it so in- 

 expertly that it seized him by the finger and retained its hold for a 



