ERRONEOUS NOTIONS ABOUT SNAKES. 37 



occasionally ; and there are rare instances of non-venomous Snakes 

 preying upon poisonous ones. The venomous kinds first kill their 

 victim by poison ; others by smothering it between the coils of their 

 body. As they do not possess organs for tearing their prey to 

 pieces, nor a dentition fit for mastication, the prey is swallowed 

 entire ; and in consequence of the great width of the mouth, and of 

 the extraordinary extensibility of the skin of the gullet, they are 

 able to swallow animals of which the girth much exceeds their own. 

 The Sea Snakes prey mostly upon fishes, and the ordinary Water 

 Snakes (Homolopsidce, &c.) on Frogs and other Batrachians. Certain 

 swallowers of birds' eggs have peculiar spinous processes proceeding 

 from the vertebrae of the neck, the object of which is to fracture the 

 shell of an egg during the process of deglutition. 



Most of the Ophidian Reptiles are oviparous, but many are 

 ovo-viviparous. The Pythons alone (so far as ascertained) perform 

 a sort of incubation, which has been repeatedly observed in captive 

 specimens of these huge Serpents. 



Many Snakes are remarkable for their great beauty of colouring 

 or for the pattern of their markings ; but on account of the poisonous 

 property so many possess, the whole order is popularly regarded 

 with horror and apprehension, and the most foolish tales are current 

 respecting various species of them. Thus many people suppose 

 that there are Snakes which rob cows of their milk ; and the skeleton 

 of a child being found in the same hollow with a number of harm- 

 less Snakes (the North American Coryphodon constrictor), it was con- 

 cluded, as a matter of course, that the serpents must have both 

 killed the child and stripped off its flesh, a thing which no snake 

 could possibly do. People are prone to exaggerate, and commonly 

 evince a fondness for the marvellous, which induce those of hot coun- 

 tries more especially, where the species of Ophidians are numerous, 

 to declare every snake met with to be the most venomous one in 

 their country; and thus travellers often come away with exceedingly 

 erroneous impressions on the subject. The Indian region surpasses 

 every other part of the globe in the number and variety of its Ophi- 

 dians ; and almost every investigation of a limited but previously 

 unexplored district, is tolerably sure to add largely to our previous 

 knowledge of them. What, however, the late Sir J. Emerson 

 Tennent asserts of those inhabiting Ceylon is equally applicable 

 to other parts of the Indian region. " During my residence in 

 Ceylon," he remarks, " I never heard of the death of a European 

 which was caused by the bite of a snake; and in the returns of 

 coroners' inquests made officially to my department, such accidents 



