Scales.—The skin of snakes, which is very elastic and extensile, is covered with scales, small on the back, and in great transverse plates on the entire ventral surface.
Fig. 14.—Arrangement of the Scales of the Head in one of the Poisonous Colubridæ (Naja tripudians, OR Cobra-di-Capello). (After Sir Joseph Fayrer.)
The shape and dimensions of the scales of the head are highly characteristic in each species. It is therefore necessary to know their names and the arrangement that they exhibit: these details are shown with sufficient clearness in figs. 13 and 14.
Coloration.—The colouring exhibited by the scales of snakes is governed generally by the biological laws of mimicry. It is therefore not a character of specific value, and may be modified several times in the course of the existence of the same reptile, according to the surroundings in which it is obliged to live.
“Nature,” write Dumeril and Bibron, “seems to have caused the tints and colours of snakes to vary in accordance with their habits and modes of life. Generally speaking, the colours are greyish or dull in species that are wont to live among sand, or which bury themselves in loose earth, as also in those that lie in wait on the trunks or large boughs of trees; while these hues are of a bluish-green, resembling the tint of the leaves and young shoots of plants, in snakes that climb among bushes or balance themselves at the end of branches. It would be difficult to describe all the modifications revealed by a general study of the colours of their skins. Let us imagine all the effects of the decomposition of light, commencing with white and the purest black, and passing on to blue, yellow, and red; associating and mixing them together, and toning them down so as to produce all shades, such as those of green, of violet, with dull or brilliant tints more or less pronounced, and of iridescent or metallic reflections modified by spots, streaks, and straight, oblique, undulating, or transverse lines. Such is the range of colours to be found in the skin of snakes.”
This skin is covered by a thick epidermis, which is periodically detached in its entirety, most frequently in a single piece. Before effecting its moult, the reptile remains in a state of complete repose for several weeks, as if asleep, and does not eat. Its scales grow darker and its skin becomes wrinkled. Then one day its epidermis tears at the angle of the lips. The animal thereupon wakes up, rubs itself among stones or branches, divests itself entirely of its covering as though it were emerging from a sheath, and proceeds forthwith in quest of food.
The moult is repeated in this way three or four times every year.
CHAPTER II.
HABITS OF POISONOUS SNAKES. THEIR CAPTURE.
All poisonous snakes are carnivorous. They feed on small mammals (rats, mice), birds, batrachians, other reptiles or fish, which they kill by poisoning them by means of their fangs.