About Snake's Eggs. 



BY PBOF. G. BBOWN GOODE. 



Mr. J. C. Christian, of Huntington, Ind., writes: 

 " I have several times killed water snakes, which, 

 when opened, contained upwards of twenty good 

 sized young snakes, from six to seven inches long. 

 Last summer, after pulling out a large stump, we 

 found twenty-seven eggs, which we broke, finding 

 in each a well developed young snake about nine 

 inches long ; afterwards we found and killed two 

 snakes near the same place, about four fee.t long, 

 and resembling the snakes in the eggs, and I sup- 

 posed they deposited the eggs. I am satisfied that 

 some snakes bring forth their young alive, while 

 others lay eggs. Now is there any other class of 

 animals which have more than one way of repro- 

 ducing their young." 



Mr. Christian has determined for himself a fact 

 which has long been known to naturalists. Some 

 snakes do lay eggs, while others give birth to living 

 young, yet the difference is not so great as it may 

 at first appear. We all know that every animal, in 

 Its earliest stages of development, is enclosed with- 

 in the walls of an egg. That all life is produced 

 from eggs, " Omne vivum ex ovo'", is an adage 

 handed down from the earliest times, and modern 

 investigations have confirmed its truth. 



Animals are either viviparous, oviparous, oi ovo- 

 viviparous. The first class includes all the highest 

 animals, the mammals, or those which suckle their 

 young ; and in these the young animal derives its 

 nourishment from the system of its parent, until 

 it is strong enough for an independent life. In the 

 other two classes, which ought really to be con- 

 sidered as one, the young animal is walled up at an 

 early period within the outer coverings of the egg, 

 and as it is now entirely separated from the paren- 

 tal system, it is nourished by a supply of nutritious 

 material stored up within the egg, and which we 

 call the yolk. When the young animal is sufficient- 

 ly grown to care for itself, and the yolk of the egg 

 is all used, it bursts the envelope of the egg, and 

 is born. To this class belong birds, reptiles, 

 batrachians (frogs, toads, etc.), fishes, insects, 

 crustaceans (crabs and lobsters), worms, mollusks, 

 and all the lower animals. Oviparous animals are 

 those which "lay " their eggs to be hatched by the 

 warmth of the parent's body, as in most birds ; by 

 the warmth or the soil or sun, as in reptiles ; or by 

 the warmth of the water, as in fishes. Ovo-vivipar- 

 ous animals, are those which do not lay their eggs, 

 but retain them until the envelopes are broken, so 

 that the young are born alive. The casual observer 

 would be very likely to call these viviparous, but a 

 study of their anatomy shows us that they are very 

 close to the ovipara ; in fact, the only difference is 

 this, that the egg is delayed a little longer in the 

 former, so that it is hatched just before it is laid. 



