Reptiles, $c. 2269 



young ones when threatened with or fearing injury : the majority of the readers and 

 writers in such a journal are not naturalists ; they know neither what to observe or how 

 to observe it ; and consequently their statements and arguments melt into thin air be- 

 fore the cross-examination which the mind of a naturalist is sure to bestow on them : 

 nevertheless the discussion has not been confined to non-naturalists, and excellent re- 

 marks have been made by naturalists — remarks well worthy of being transferred to 

 these pages, but which I cannot readily so transfer on account of their obvious rela- 

 tion to other remarks which fall under the category of aberrant. The somewhat dog- 

 matical character of a naturalist's mind has a tendency to pooh-pooh the statement in 

 question ; such is my own disposition : I don't know how to believe that a young and 

 tender animal can remain in the strongly digestive stomach of a viper and receive no 

 injury ; neither can I imagine what kind of instinct can teach the young of any ani- 

 mal to seek so dangerous a refuge. But I wish my readers to peruse the following 

 statements. 1st. My late lamented friend William Christy, Jun., found a fine speci- 

 men of the common scaly lizard with two young ones : taking an interest in everything 

 relating to Natural History, he put them into a small pocket vasculum to bring home ; 

 but when he next opened the vasculum the young ones had disappeared, and the belly 

 of the parent was greatly distended : he concluded she had devoured her own offspring : 

 at night the vasculum was laid on a table, and the lizard was therefore at rest ; in the 

 morning the young ones had reappeared, and the mother was as lean as at first. 

 2nd. Mr. Henry Doubleday, of Epping, supplies the following information : a person 

 whose name is English, a good observer, and one as it were brought up in Natural 

 History, under Mr. Doubleday's tuition, once happened to set his foot on a lizard in 

 the forest, and while the lizard was thus held down by his foot he distinctly saw three 

 young ones run out of her mouth : struck by such a phenomenon he killed and opened 

 the old one, and found two other young ones in her stomach, which had been injured 

 when he trod on her. In both these instances the narrators are of that class who do 

 know what to observe and how to observe it ; and the facts, whatever explanation 

 they may admit, are not to be dismissed as the result of imagination or mistaken ob- 

 servation. — Id. 



On killing Worms before using them as Bait for Fish. — Persons who employ worms 

 for angling, and who dislike using them for that purpose in a living state, may be glad 

 to know that a little common salt sprinkled on a worm will destroy life very quickly, 

 and without rendering the bait unsuitable for the fish, or at all events for the follow- 

 ing species of fish, which I have seen so caught, viz., common trout, perch, roach, 

 rudd, dace, gudgeon, minnow, and sharp-nosed eel. — J. H. Gurney ; Easton, near 

 Norwich, September 1, 1848. 



Productive Eggs of a Female of Smerinthus ocellatus taken from the Parent after 

 Death. — Having understood that it was a generally received opinion, that eggs taken 

 from a female insect after death would not hatch, I beg to state that having captured 

 a worn Smerinthus ocellatus, in May, I took a quantity of eggs from her two days af- 

 ter death, and that they all hatched in about forty hours after those she laid before 



vi 2 s 



