VARIOUS INCIDENTS RECORDED. 231 
follow suit. The curiosity was at once packed up and 
sent alive to the Zoological Gardens, a journey which 
in those days occupied considerably more than the 
seven hours now sutficient to do the distance. Al- 
though the adder reached its destination alive, it died 
soon afterwards. 
This is not the place for an abstruse embryolocical 
dissertation to account for the monstrosity, but it is 
probably not unconnected with the fact that I drew 
attention to in the chapter on the development of the 
adder—namely, that frequently one finds two embryo 
adders in one ege. Where such is the case, an 
accidental fusion of the early developing cells might 
account for the production of a double-headed adder. 
Adders and snake-stones.—One does not hear 
very much about snake-stones in connection with 
British serpents, but in tropical countries, where 
serpents are common, these curious charms or reme- 
dies—they are used in both ways—present a very 
interesting study. But the Eastern ideas on the sub- 
ject have their counterpart in our country in Wales, 
Scotland, and in Cornwall. (An excellent account of 
“snake-stones” is given in ‘Our Reptiles and Ba- 
trachians, by M. C. Cooke.) 
The superstition is that “about Midsummer Eve it 
is usual for suakes to meet in companies, and that by 
joining heads together and hissing, a kind of bubble is 
formed, which the rest, by continual hissing, blow on 
