374 
BLUE MOUNTAINS. 
THE CRESTED SNAKE. 
Mr. Hill writes me thus: — ‘^December, 1845. 
There are two living attractions in the Blue Moun- 
tains, a Crested Snake,, and a sweetly mysterious 
singing bird called the Solitaire The 
Snake is identical with one I was told of in Spanish 
Haiti, having a red crest and wattles, very much 
resembling the head of a cock. Strange fictions were 
invented of its crowing like the cock, and stealing 
into hen-roosts, and by this deception, when it was 
coiled up, and nothing but its crested head seen, 
surprising the poultry on the perch, and devouring 
them. The Spaniards narrated to me these parti- 
culars, wdth the words, ^ II canta como un Gallop — 
and our people speak of it as crowing like a cock. 
Certainly it is the most wonderful serpent since the 
days that Eve was deceived in Paradise *, if it has 
a voice so much approaching to distinct if not arti- 
culate sounds. 
‘‘ I believe there is a Crested Snake known here, 
I only reject the cock-crow story.” 
that the motion of the scales brings to view minute evanescent spots 
on the body, chiefly on the neck. The eyes are very beautiful, like 
some gems of a pale lustre, clouded, Robinson found each of the 
two rows of caudal scuta to contain 173, = 346 in all, more than 
double the number assigned by Linneeus to any of his species. 
* “ On his rear. 
Circular base of rising folds, that tower’d 
Fold above fold, a surging maze ! his head 
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes ; 
With burnish’d neck of verdant gold, erect 
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 
Floated redundant.” Par. Lost, ix. 497. 
