"The Lord thy God … who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions."—DEUTERONOMY viii. 15.
"The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, saith the Lord."—ISAIAH lxv. 25.
The "creeping things" which God caused the earth to bring forth on the Fifth Day are so unlike each other in many respects that we might at first sight wonder that they should have been grouped together; but the more we study Reptiles—so called from the Latin word reptilis, creeping—the more we see that there are many things which this great family of vertebrate animals have in common.
There are four chief divisions of the Reptile family—Tortoises and
Turtles, Crocodiles, Lizards, and Snakes.
Most reptiles have a tail and two pairs of limbs, but, as you know, Snakes are destitute of limbs, and seem to move along by a motion from inside, so that they have been said to walk on their ribs. Serpents are covered with horny scales; Crocodiles and Tortoises have a bony covering.
The Tortoise—so called from its twisted feet, or its crooked way of walking—has, as you know, an upper and an under shell which covers its body like a coat of mail, protecting it from every enemy except man. This strong shell is, like that of the snail, a house for the tortoise to live in; but this house is formed by arched bones, and is part of the creature itself. The four feet of the tortoise or turtle, and a curious mouth rather like the beak of a bird—without teeth, but with jaws hard enough to make a bite from it very painful—and a little scaly tail; these are the only parts of the animal not covered by the shields of its bony shells.
The Lizard has both limbs and teeth, but no shell. Lizards are wonderfully active, darting away at the least alarm, so that it is not easy to catch them.
We may think of the Crocodile of the African, and the Alligator of the North American rivers, as enormous lizards; though they are now placed in a class by themselves, on account of their horny covering, which is so strong that it is almost impossible to pierce through it, and so smooth that a bullet will glance off from it. Serpents have neither shell nor limbs. Their vertebræ, as you will see, if you look at any skeleton of a snake in the Museum, fit very beautifully one into the other; and owing to this they are able to glide swiftly along the ground, to coil their shining length round trees, and to dart their heads in every direction.
In one respect Tortoises, Lizards, and Serpents are alike—they all lay eggs, only the shell is not made of lime and earth, but is soft like leather. They are also cold-blooded animals, like fish. Of tortoises, some live on land, some in marshy places, some in rivers; turtles live in the sea, their lungs being so made as to enable them to remain under water without breathing.
The common tortoise, often kept in gardens, is found in the south of Europe, and is generally not more than nine inches long. Its upper shield is exceedingly strong. My brothers and sisters and I used often to stand upon the back of a pet tortoise which lived in our garden; it did not seem to feel our weight, but I remember finding it no easy matter to keep my feet together upon its smooth back, and none of us could perform this feat unless the tortoise was pleased to stand still while we balanced ourselves upon him. I can, in imagination, see this little tortoise of ours now, not larger than a crab such as you see at the fishmonger's, with its short legs and feet, and its little tail, all covered with scales, sticking out between its upper and under shells. How we used to laugh, when we saw him draw in his head and feet under the shelter of the shell: the only sign he gave of being annoyed at all our pranks! We were told that our tortoise might not die for a hundred years, and I have heard that some have been known to live twice that time; it is a slow sort of life, but we must not forget that, in the poem about the Hare and the Tortoise, it was "slow and steady" that won the race.