We have an admirable opportunity for study in our visits to the Zoological Gardens, and there the lover of nature can decide for himself. Hours and hours has one watched, and I admit (in the early days of my studies) waited, to see this lubrication which, as the books told me, was performed by the tongue. Often and often one has heard visitors say to each other when they have seen the prey about to be devoured, ‘Now we shall see, or you will see’ (as the case might be) ‘the snake lick it all over before he swallows it.’

An observation to this effect was once made in our hearing while I was on the point of asking the keeper if he had ever observed anything of the kind, and was telling him how often it had been so stated in print.

‘Snakes never did, and never will, lick their prey, ma’am,’ returned Holland emphatically; ‘but I have seen the saliva flow, it is so plentiful.’ And so have I, and so may you, patient reader, if you are sufficiently interested in the subject. You will soon become convinced that such a process as ‘licking’ is impossible, and you will soon decide that if the reptile did this instinctively, its tongue would have developed into something more like that of a cat, strong and rough with tiny spines, or some organ better adapted to the performance than a thin pencil or fork of tender flesh.

It is much to be regretted that a number of anecdotes which describe this ‘lubrication’ have been retained and quoted over and over again in books on snakes. Writers who are conscientiously instructing us, and who are even telling us ‘snakes do not lick their prey,’ quote the anecdotes which tell us that they do, and thus appear to favour the assumed mistake.

Space will not permit of the numerous examples which might be here introduced in proof of this. Nor is it necessary to name more than two or three of these misleading anecdotes; the reader will at once recognise them, for they appear everywhere.

First comes the M’Leod narrative, which has found favour with popular writers for no less than sixty-three years! The first edition of the Voyage of the Alceste, by Dr. M’Leod, the surgeon on board, was published in London in 1817, a second edition in 1818, and a third (so popular was the work) in 1819. His account of feeding the boa constrictor was not the least popular part of the little book; for in those days there were few who knew what to believe where a snake was concerned. The account of a goat being swallowed fills several pages, written in a style to exaggerate horrors, and apparently deny to the reptile any right to obey nature’s laws. ‘The python fixed a deadly and malignant eye on the goat:’ ... ‘first operation was to dart out its forked tongue:’ ... ‘continued to grasp with its fangs:’ ... ‘began to prepare for swallowing:’ and ‘commenced by lubricating with its saliva:’ ... ‘commission of this murder,’ etc.

Maunder, in his Treasury of Natural History, quotes this, having previously stated (under the head Boa Constrictor): ‘The prey is then prepared for being swallowed, which the creature accomplished by pushing the limbs into the most convenient position, and then covering the surface with a glutinous saliva.’ Though not positively asserted that the tongue is the agent in this ‘covering,’ the reader naturally jumps to this conclusion. The ‘Penny’ and several other encyclopedias quote the M’Leod story, among them the Encyclopedia Britannica, ed. 1856, notwithstanding the compiler of the article ‘Reptilia’ affirms, ‘The use of the tongue is not exactly known.’ Surely this licking over an enormous mass of fur or wool, each time the reptile partakes of food, would be a very important use indeed of the tongue, did such a process take place.

Mr. Philip Henry Gosse, in his Natural History of Reptiles, 1860, repeats the M’Leod story but he follows it up by also quoting a writer, Broderip, who carefully considered the subject, and who doubted the possibility of such a tongue performing this office.

Mr. Gosse is one of the most popular of our ‘drawing-room’ naturalists. A careful and conscientious writer, he has contributed in his various works a great deal of valuable information, and has done as much, if not more, towards inducing a taste for natural history than any other author of his day and class.