12 THE LAND-MAEKS OF 



milk out of a saucer. He held the snake near 

 the head, and put the saucer to it, when it readi- 

 ly drank the milk and in comparatively large 

 quantities at a time. Miss Hopley says, "We 

 of late so often see it said of any parti- 

 cular snakes that ' they neither ate nor drank at 

 first,' or that ' they drank though they would 

 not eat,' that we almost wonder their bibulous 

 propensities were ever doubted ; especially as the 

 majority of snakes are fond of water and swim 

 readily; we are surprised, therefore, that the 

 second edition of Mr. Lealy's really valuable work, 

 published so lately as 1870, should still retain 

 the assertion that snakes have never been seen 

 to drink. Mr. Frank Buckland saw his Goronella 

 drink frequently, though she ate nothing ; and 

 as the discovery of this interesting lady and her 

 brood, born in London in 1862, formed the sub- 

 ject of many papers in the scientific journals at 

 the time, one would ' suppose that they would 

 have been heard of in Germany where the species 

 C. loBvis is well known," As regards the shed- 

 periodicai ^ing of the skiu, Miss Hopley, who has several 

 oiaa^f times witnessed the process, describes how the 

 snakes crawl out of their skins. Weir Mitchell 

 thus describes it: " My snakes lost their integu- 



