SNAKE. 
109 
to take the water, as they swim perfectly well. In 
the viper we have noticed that the young are ex- 
cluded alive : this is not the case with the common 
snake, which, according to La Cepede, deposits her 
eggs, from fourteen to twenty in number, either in 
holes with a warm southern aspect, or in dunghills, 
where they remain till the following spring before 
they are hatched. The eggs are connected together 
by a gluey matter so as to form a continued chain, 
and the young are rolled up spirally, in the middle 
of a fluid which resembles the white of a fowl’s 
egg- 
Those who have been able to conquer their pre- 
judices against this tribe of animals have sometimes 
domesticated them ; and we have known a gentleman 
who kept a common snake in his house during a 
winter, and constantly fed it with milk from his tea 
table. Mr. White, in his Natural History of Sel- 
borne, tells us of a gentleman who kept a tame 
snake, which was perfectly sweet in its person un- 
less a stranger, or a dog or cat came in, when it 
immediately began to hiss, and filled the room with 
a stench that was hardly supportable. In Sardinia 
it appears that the country girls are very partial to 
these snakes, frequently keep them with great care, 
prepare their victuals for them, and even put it into 
their mouths. They are considered by the common 
people in that island as lucky, and therefore never 
driven from their doors, lest their good fortune 
should leave them at the same time. 
