360 
NOTES TO THE 
The appearance of the eggs in this dimgheap, just as the parent 
snake or snakes had ]3hiced them, was so striking, that I took 
them home and cast them in plaster of Paris, old snake and all. 
The cast, coloured to nature, is now in my museum. 
" There were sixty-four eggs altogether in this one bunch. I do 
not know from experience how many eggs the common snake 
lays, but I should say from twenty to thirty. It is, therefore, 
probable that more than one snake had chosen the spot on 
this dunghill to deposit their eggs, just as one salmon will 
deposit her eggs in a favourable place without consideration for 
the other mother salmon that precedes or follows her. 
" The temperature where the eggs were deposited [in the dung- 
heap] was about 84° in the sun, and the nest was buried about 
eighteen inches deep on the southern aspect, as though the 
mother snake knew that that was the best place for the eggs. 
I then proceeded to dissect some of these eggs. A few of them 
were blanks, containing nothing, but all the rest were good 
eggs. When the skin was cut through, a quantity of clear 
nlbumen came out, just the same as the wliite of a hen's egg. 
Floating in this was a yolk of a much yellower colour than that 
of the hen's egg, and inside this yolk was discoverable the 
embryo snake. Out of the three embryo baby snakes I examined 
two of them were quite lively, but gelatinous, and as yet not 
well enough developed to move more than to give a slight 
wriggle. The heart, however, could distinctly be seen to beat 
under the trans]3arent skin for some seconds. The brain also 
was very prominent. In the drawing two little snakes are 
represented as just hatched out. My readers should search for 
snakes' eggs in old dunghills in August and September. My 
friend Mr. Burr preserves snakes in his park ; he will not allow 
them to be killed. Vipers, however, aie kept down as much as 
possible." 
The drawing (p. 361) shows the wonderful manner in which the 
vertebrae of snakes are united, so as to combine strength with 
freedom of motion. This wondrous structure has been so ably 
described by Dr. Eoget, in his Bridgewater Treatise on Animal 
and Vegetable Physiology, which everyone should read, that I 
quote it as a sample of the Doctor's power of describing evidences 
of design : — 
" It is evident that, in the absence of all external instruments 
of prehension and of progressive motion, it is necessary that the 
spine should be rendered extremely flexible, so as to adapt itself 
to a great variety of movements. This extraordinary flexibility 
is given, first, by the subdivision of the spinal column into a 
great number of small pieces ; secondly, by the great freedom of 
