Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life

by Catherine Cooper Hopley

PART III.—ITS USES.

ONE more function in which the tongue has no part it is important first to mention. ‘It is supposed to be concerned in the function of voice, that is, hissing,’ says Mr. Frank Buckland in his Curiosities of Natural History, 1860. Now, as this is an extremely popular book, and as Mr. Buckland was a very popular writer, and much quoted and believed in from his pleasant and genial style, and his many opportunities, it is necessary to explain that the tongue is often or generally in its sheath while the snake hisses, and therefore has no part whatever in the ‘function of voice.’

More recently still, a writer in 1876 is under the same impression. It is well known that the contributors to that excellent magazine, the Leisure Hour, are for the most part persons of good literary standing. However, in the matter of snakes we are all only learners.

There are in the magazine referred to, three chapters ‘On Snakes,’ occupying, with the illustrations, about eight pages, in which the general subject is treated.

‘It is a very general belief that the sting of a poisonous snake is in its tongue,’ says this writer, ‘and to any one who has seen an adder ready for attack, with its body coiled, its head and neck reared aloft, and its long, narrow tongue, split for a considerable distance from the point inwards, and thus resembling a two-pronged fork, vibrating rapidly, accompanied by a hissing sound, the needle-like points of the tongue have a decidedly stinging aspect. It need hardly be said that the tongue is only responsible for the hissing.’ The hissing is from the lungs (see chap. ix.), and, as may be repeated, often while the tongue is within its sheath, the opening of which is forward in the mouth.

The tongue of a snake occupies much the same place in the lower jaw as that of other animals; only being, while passive, within its sheath, which opens at the tip, the tongue can move but in one direction, namely, forwards.

The illustration in the Leisure Hour which accompanies the above writer’s explanation, displays a rattlesnake with widely-extended jaws, and a tongue which, by comparison, must be from root to tip half a foot in length, and represented as coming from far back in the throat, as if no sheath existed.

The tongue of a snake not being so planted, and not by any possibility intercepting the breath, it is needless to repeat that it can never be any agent of the voice, i.e. ‘hissing,’ nor is it every snake that does hiss (see chap. ix.). Illustrations conveying an entirely erroneous impression are very much to be regretted, and unfortunately this misplacing of the snake’s tongue is an extremely common error, and we recognise the familiar woodcut again and again in a number of different publications, misconceptions thus being seriously multiplied. Bad illustrations, even more than printed errors, are responsible, because more persons turn the leaves of a book to look at these, than those who read the page, and a glance either instructs or misinforms the eye.

The hissing of a snake, as we may here add, is merely an escape or expulsion of air from the lungs, more or less quick or ‘loud,’ as the reptile is more or less alarmed or angry. Conjecturally, one may suppose this hissing to correspond with the agitated breathing or panting of other animals, or of an excited person.