1883.] Do Snakes Swallow their Young? 475 
On the same occasion “ Land and Water ” noticed the 
work as follows : — 
“ The fa <51 that the natural-history papers in this volume 
made their appearance in the first instance in these columns 
is an effectual bar to our offering any opinion on their 
merits.” 
To this I replied that “ All of the natural-history papers 
were sent to this journal, but only about half of them, as 
the work plainly shows, were published in it, and these did 
not include the most important on the viper question : they 
were all intended for Mr. Buckland, in his usual manner, to 
comment on them, and admit or reje< 5 t the evidence contained 
in them.” — (P. 193.) 
It was in October, 1873, I learned that Mr. Buckland was 
an “ anti-swallower.’ Notwithstanding the evidence fur- 
nished in “ Contributions,” Mr. Buckland published, in his 
edition of White’s “ Natural History of Selborne,” some 
strange remarks on this subje( 5 t ; and still stranger ones in 
what he afterwards wrote in “ Land and Water ” of Sep- 
tember 2nd, 1876, when he gave a woodcut and a description 
of “ a viper supposed to have swallowed its young.” This 
forced me to review Mr. Buckland very fully, which I did 
in an Appendix (pp. 187 to 199) in 1878, that made part of 
the issue of “ Contributions ” in 1880. I there said that he 
was “ a bar in the way, the cause of unnecessary trouble, 
in having the question of the viper swallowing her young 
admitted as a facft in natural history.*’ — (P. 197.) 
In my two letters, read by Mr. Goode before he took up 
the subject, I said that “ various kinds of snakes,” and “ all 
the American snakes as far as known,” swallow their young. 
The letter procured by him gave the names of many of 
these, and, as I have said, confirmed everything I had 
written in my two letters, which contained all the faCts and 
principles connected with the subject, and illustrated what 
I wrote in mine that appeared in “ Land and Water ” on 
January nth, 1873 : — 
“ A state of ignorance in regard to the serpent tribe can- 
not be said to exist in America, although the knowledge 
possessed by people is of a casual and partial nature, more 
or less recent and rusty, and disconnected from any theory 
or system, which makes it all the more reliable to a person 
who will gather it up, like pieces of a puzzle lying loosely 
around, and arrange it into a whole.” — (P. 17.) 
There is not an attempt at generalisation in the letter 
received by Mr. Goode (as printed), while all of mine (parti- 
cularly the first two) were full of it, and which he might 
4 I 2 
