Another popular anecdote much used is that of Sir R. Ker Porter, who (cir. 1820-24) sent an anaconda to the United Service Museum, accompanied by an account of its seizing its prey. ‘In an instant every bone is broken, and the long, fleshy tongue passes over the entire form of the lifeless beast, leaving on it a sort of glutinous saliva which greatly facilitates deglutition.’ This last clause was particularly striking, and you find those three words, ‘greatly facilitates deglutition,’ used ever since by more writers than one can enumerate.
A third of the many well-worn anecdotes in which the ‘lubrication’ is conspicuous, is taken from a German journal, the Ephemerides, in which a combat between a boa constrictor and a buffalo is described in the approved sensational style, and this sentence occurs:—‘In order to make the body slip down the throat more glibly, it (the snake) was seen to lick the whole body over, and thus cover it with its mucus.’
Perhaps these three anecdotes, copied from book to book for, say, only fifty years, have done as much to mislead regarding the second reputed use of the tongue, as Shakspeare and his predecessors did regarding the stinging theory.
Sir Robert Ker Porter published two very handsome quarto volumes (illustrated) of his Travels in Georgia, Persia, and the East, during the years 1817 to 1821. Such a work from a distinguished traveller in that day would soon grow into popularity; but, like Dr. M’Leod, he does not describe his snake by the cool light of science.
In a very able article, ‘Boa’ in the good old Penny Cyclopedia, dated 1835, the writer, quoted by Mr. Philip Henry Gosse, mildly criticises the lubrication theory, and gives at length an excellent paper on the subject, contributed to the Zoological Journal in 1826 by the distinguished naturalist, W. J. Broderip, F.L.S., etc.[32] Very courteously Mr. Broderip discusses Dr. McLeod’s description, and in giving an account of what he himself witnessed in the manner of a boa feeding, speaks of ‘the secretion of lubricating mucus being excessive,’ and that ‘the jaws dripped with the mucus which had lubricated the parts,’ but not once mentioning the tongue as having any part in this function. The writer in the Penny Cyclopedia concludes by saying that he had himself frequently watched the snakes while feeding, and they ‘never covered the victim; the tongue was thrust forth, but only,’ etc. And yet so many book-makers who must have read this have copied the anecdotes without the comment, and have thus popularized the lingual lubrication!
CHAPTER VII.
THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE.