A gentleman in Ohio saw a water snake on a bank. He got a pole, and with one stroke of it wounded her, but not so much as to disable her. She instantly made for the water, swam about her own length, when she ‘wheeled round’ with difficulty, and placing her under jaw just above the level of the water, opened her mouth wide, when some ten or twelve young snakes ran or swam down her throat; after which she went in search of a hiding-place. She was, however, killed and opened, and ‘about twenty’ living young snakes were found within her, ‘two or three of which were seven or eight inches long.’ Out of the 120 cases recorded, sixty-seven of the witnesses saw and described the actions so distinctly as to leave no doubt in the minds of their hearers; and of these, twenty-two heard the parents’ signal ‘whistle,’ or hiss, or click, or rattles, according to the species observed.
A man Charles Smith was ploughing near Chicago, when his plough caught and turned over a large flat stone (‘rock,’ as they call it there), exposing a very large rattlesnake and her young ones. The mother rattled the alarm, and all the young ones ran down her throat. Smith killed the old one, and immediately the young ones began to crawl back from her mouth and were killed by him. Thirteen of them were five or six inches long.
Some of the witnesses, after killing the snake into which they had seen the young ones retire, saw them shaken out again by dogs which had seized the mother. A few of the observers went on several successive days to watch a certain snake that was known to have a nest close by; and on each occasion when alarmed, the young ran into the parent’s mouth.
Mr. Putnam also mentioned a ‘striped snake’ (which he had considered ovoviviparous) bringing forth live young ones at the end of August; she ‘having been a long while in confinement.’ (This was no doubt a case of retarded functions.)
In vol. iii. of the American Naturalist, 1870, an interesting record of the ‘blowing snake’ (Heterodon platyrhinos) appears. One of these snakes had been wounded in her side, and over one hundred young ones from 6 to 8 inches long came forth from the wound. They were all active, all blowing and flattening their bodies like thoroughly wide-awake Heterodons. Sixty-three of them being uninjured died in alcohol, thirteen were much lacerated, as was the mother, and the rest escaped. Says the narrator, ‘We know that this snake is oviparous. Had she swallowed them, or can she be also ovoviviparous?’ (Well, she might be either or both as occasion demanded!) This is one of those examples which might have given rise to the supposition handed down by Aristotle, and explained p. 431.
One hundred snakelings from 6 to 8 inches long seems almost incredible from the space they would occupy. Yet in bulk they would not be more than one large snake which the mother could easily swallow. The accommodating ribs render such habits more feasible than at first sight would appear. Heterodon platyrhinos is a wonderfully prolific snake. In the Zoological Society Proceedings, vol. vi. 1869, S. S. Ruthven states that he has observed it to bring forth over one hundred live young at a time.
One more example shall be added, of what Professor Goode considered a remarkable instance of hereditary instinct. In a hay-field was found a nest of eggs, one of which was cut open, when a small but perfectly formed ‘milk adder’ within immediately assumed a menacing attitude and ‘brandished’ its tongue. Some of the other eggs were then torn open, the young in which acted in a similar manner. Then the old snake appeared, and after endeavours to encourage this unexpected family, put her head on a level with the ground and opened her mouth, when the young ones vanished down her throat.
It is worthy of notice that in many of the above cases the mother snake made a signal noise, that the young ones understood this signal, and that she opened her mouth in a manner which they readily comprehended. ‘This concurrence of testimony is not to be disregarded,’ says Professor Goode. And the reader will admit the force of these evidences. Those witnesses, dispersed over thousands of square miles, had entered into no compact to make their accounts agree; nor did one spectator in Kansas know what another in New Jersey was looking at or writing about.
After such a weight of evidence, and in face of the decision arrived at by the American Convention, it is greatly to be lamented that the Field, so far from advancing like our American friends, now retrogrades on this question. So lately as October 1881, when another case was cited of the maternal refuge, the Editor closes his columns against investigation; and refuses to be convinced unless he were to see ‘the young vipers at the Zoological Gardens obligingly run in and out of their mothers’ mouths,’ which is a performance we are never likely to witness. For, in the first place, the young are often produced in mid-day, in the presence of the crowd of visitors. Thus, from their birth accustomed to publicity, they have not the motive as when in their native haunts they are suddenly alarmed at the first sight of an apparition in human form. And in the second place, the young are generally removed at once into a separate cage, and they lose all knowledge of their mother. Both mother and progeny are familiar with humanity; and the former is much more likely at the sight of the keeper to open her mouth for a mouse than to invite her children to enter therein.