The Messrs. Woodward’s scientific snake would not have crept into these pages had it not previously figured in the Zoologist, and thence copied in other prints, thereby misleading many readers. It also proved a subject worth discussing by thinking persons, and was alluded to very particularly by an ophiological friend and publisher in a letter to myself, which may be here usefully quoted. My friend, who has long stimulated me by his kind encouragement of my work, and by the assistance of his experience and judgment, was pleased to express much interest in a little paper on the Deirodon[13], which I had written for Aunt Judy’s Magazine, he having read it shortly before the appearance of the Messrs. Woodward’s statement in the Zoologist, April 1875:—
‘In this month’s Zoologist,’ wrote my friend, ‘a writer says that a certain snake makes havoc of the hen-house, by boring a hole in the egg and sucking its contents! Can this be true? To a letter of mine to Mr. Newman (the then editor of the Zoologist), on the subject, he replies, “With regard to snakes eating eggs, it has been repeated so often that I cannot help fearing Mr. Woodward may have imbibed the notion from American sources. It is so common in the United States to find snakes in holes in the bottoms of trees made by woodpeckers, that it seems almost impossible to resist the conviction that they enter these holes to get the birds themselves, or their young, or their eggs. It must be regretted that those witnesses who come into court with such evidence are not, generally speaking, the kind of close observers in whose dicta we can place implicit reliance.” This,’ continues my correspondent, ‘Mr. Newman writes after I had suggested that some families of snakes have triturating powers (learned from Aunt Judy) in the throat, independent altogether of palatal teeth. The subject seems to be as much steeped in the unknown, as are the ways of the beautiful creatures themselves.’
This from a well-known and highly-popular publisher, a man of education, culture, and scientific attainments, though snakes hitherto had not been his specialty, any more than that of the late editor of the Zoologist. The latter, however, admitting his doubts on the subject of ophidian egg-feeders, would have done well to have added a note to that effect to the account given by Mr. Woodward, which, simply from its appearance in a scientific journal, might be received as authority.
A few more well-known proofs of ophidian taste for eggs may conclude this chapter. Of our own green or ring snake (Coluber natrix), Mr. Bell says, ‘It feeds upon young birds, eggs, and mice, but prefers frogs.’ In Balfour’s India, on the subject of cobra-worship, mention is made of the snakes getting into larders for eggs and milk, and being protected as the good genius of the house on such occasions.
But the Hindû custom of placing eggs for snakes at their serpent festivals must be too familiar to most of my readers to need further comment.
CHAPTER IV.
DO SNAKES DRINK?