The peculiar condition of this snake not being suspected, not even her sex, the appearance of two fully-developed though dead young ones on April 2d was an important event in the Ophidarium, and one to be forthwith chronicled in the Zoological Society’s Proceedings. The secretary, at the ensuing meeting, exhibited the two young Anacondas, and afforded some interesting details concerning the mother. During the next few days four more young ones were born, but all dead; and during several weeks, others in a high state of decomposition were produced. ‘She might have had a hundred!’ said the keeper, who felt fully persuaded that she had voluntarily ‘kept them back.’ Four were well developed; one was partly coiled in the ruptured shell, which was of a tough, coriaceous texture, white, and as thick as orange peel.
Occurrences of this nature send us to our book-shelves. The python and some of the boas had laid eggs, and Anaconda might have been expected to do the same, as we read in the papers that wrote ‘leaders’ on the event. But suddenly we all discover (‘we’ second and third rate naturalists, who regard the biological professors at a respectful distance, and aspire only to a printed half column in a similarly aspiring journal),—we all discover that Cuvier had long ago pointed out that l’Eunect murin is viviparous (like the regular water snakes), and that Schlegel had subsequently confirmed the fact from personal observation. Thus we learn as we go.
Those born dead in London offered no exception, therefore, to the rule, but were rather to be regarded as one of those cases in which the mother, under circumstances unpropitious for the production of her progeny, retards the deposition of her eggs or her young.
Let us picture to ourselves the condition of this poor Anaconda. Just at the very time when instinct would have guided her to the spot most favourable for the coming brood, she is transferred from her native lagoons, and crowded into a dark close box just large enough to contain her. Though without water for many months, this ‘good swimmer’ arrives alive, a proof of her astonishing powers of endurance; but she has now no morass, no lagoon or refreshing river in which to invigorate herself and aid her natural functions, and the young ones die unborn. The poor mother soon showed evidence of disease and suffering, and was after a time mercifully put to death.
There was no possibility of ascertaining the period of gestation in her case, but there was every reason to regard it as one of postponed functions, and another illustration of that astonishing capability described by ophiologists of snakes which ‘may at pleasure,’ i.e. at will, retard the laying of eggs or birth of young!
The prejudice against snakes has been so strong, that there are persons who would even exclude them from zoological collections. Should these pages fall under the eye of such persons, they must admit that the Ophidia in captivity present grand opportunities towards the attainment of scientific knowledge. These important results far outweigh the less pleasing spectacles.
And now for our little Anguis fragilis, with all her wrong names and the wrong impressions produced thereby, which, with some particulars of her behaviour in captivity, shall form the subject of the next chapter. Here she will, I think, be accepted among those examples of abnormal incubation which belong to the present one.
Searching for the lovely little Drosera and its attendant exquisite mosses on ‘The Common’ at Bournemouth (the one close to the town), on the look-out for lizards also, I saw what at first sight appeared to be an extremely long, black slug, lying on a smooth little patch of grass in the sunshine. Approaching to inspect this shining nondescript, I at once recognised a slow-worm. Being not only entirely and deeply black, but unusually short and proportionately thicker than any I had ever seen, the familiar ‘worm’ had not at first sight been identified. Its short, blunt tail had evidently lost an inch or two; and its bulk suggested a speedy increase of family. Already I had four others and a green lizard, the male Lacerta agilis, which I had also captured. The date of ‘Blackie’s’ capture was August 26, 1879; the precise time being important, because, as just now stated, the period of gestation depends much on the degree of external warmth that can be had to assist in maturing the embryo; and, as many of my readers will recollect, very little sunshine had we that summer. Chilly rains and cloudy weather marked the season; and to this I attributed the fact that at the end of August the slow-worm was still enceinte, when, as Bell informs us, its ordinary time to produce young is June or July.
Taking her up, ‘Blackie’ struggled and kicked, if such a remnant of tail can be said to ‘kick’ (the action being very similar), and displayed activity enough to show that she could be quick enough when occasion required it. Knowing her shy, burrowing instincts, I at once laid her on the mosses which filled my little basket, and down she retreated, there remaining without further trouble.