when she is disturbed in her dark cave:
‘Soon as that uncouth light upon them shone,
Into her mouth they crept, and suddaine all were gone.’
Again, in Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudoxia, or ‘Vulgar Errours, published in 1672, we find: ‘For the young ones will upon any fright, for protection run into the belly of the Dam. For then the old one receives them into her mouth, which way, the fright being passed, they will returne againe; which is a peculiar way of refuge.’
He quotes from the Humorous Lieutenant of Beaumont and Fletcher the words, ‘This is the old viper, and all the young ones creep every night into her belly.’
The Professor also mentioned the American traveller, Mr. Jonathan Carver, who, towards the end of the last century, recorded that he had seen a large brood of young rattlesnakes retire for safety into the throat of the parent, which he killed, when no less than seventy young ones made their escape. Practical experience demands, How had he time to reckon up these active, wriggling, tangled fugitives? Nevertheless his story found favour and has been subsequently recited as probable. Chateaubriand believed the fact, and glowingly expatiates on the ‘Superb Reptile which presents to man a pattern of tenderness.’ ... ‘When her offspring are pursued, she receives them into her mouth: dissatisfied with every other place of concealment, she hides them within herself, concluding that no asylum can be safer for her progeny than the bosom of a mother. A perfect example of sublime love, she refuses to survive the loss of her young, for it is impossible to deprive her of them without tearing out her entrails.’ Elsewhere, with less of admiration for the exemplary crotalus, Chateaubriand says, ‘By a singular faculty the female can introduce into her body the little monsters to which she has given birth.’
One of the early writers who witnessed this offer of refuge was M. de Beauvoir, who saw a disturbed rattlesnake open her jaws to receive five young ones. This amazed spectator retired to quietly watch the result, when, after the lapse of some minutes, the mother snake recovered confidence, and she again opened her mouth and ‘discharged’ her little family. Professor Palisot de Beauvoir was an eminent French naturalist of the beginning of this century, and the author of Observations sur les serpents, published in Daudin’s Histoire naturelle, Paris, 1803. He was accepted as an authority on many other points of natural history; and it is not improbable that he influenced Cuvier’s belief in the ophidian maternal refuge.
It certainly does seem incredible that an occurrence so unprecedented should have been conceived of in the first instance without some ocular demonstration of it.
Another American traveller, whose testimony Professor Goode considered of worth, was St. John Dunn Hunter,[132] who saw young ones rush into the rattlesnake’s mouth, and reappear when ‘the parent gave a sort of contractile motion of the throat as a sign that danger was past.’