Serpents are intimately associated with our religious beliefs. Not that we worship them! Far otherwise. Many excellent and orthodox persons associate with a serpent all the sin and misery which ever existed on our globe, and are persuaded that the sooner everything in the shape of one is exterminated the better.
On the other hand, those who can look at a snake with unprejudiced eyes and study its habits, find continual reason to wonder at and admire the extraordinary features which exhibit themselves in its organization. Owing to their retiring habits, many of them nocturnal, and partly in consequence of preconceived errors, less is understood about them than almost any other natural group of animals; therefore—as the reader will discover—a student, when left to himself, has to wade through ages of writers in order to find out what to believe regarding them. Scientific ophiologists are still engaged in settling mooted questions concerning them. But apart from science there is a glamour of poetry, romance, and mystery about snakes, and not without reason. There has been a great deal of what we may call ‘Drawing-room Natural History’ of late years—charmingly sensational and romantic; attractive also in illustrations and colouring, but not always intended as reliable guides for students.
All travellers are not naturalists; and though they may contribute valuable information in one branch of science, it is possible they may mislead in another; and from the very popularity of their books, such errors are rapidly disseminated. I aspire to a place on drawing-room tables for my book also, but let me assure my readers that my aim has been to assist by diligent search to establish truthfulness. Whatever of romance or sensation attaches to it, is due to the marvellous powers of the creatures who fill its pages, and whose true nature I have laboured to comprehend.
Schlegel and Dumeril are two authorities on serpents much quoted by English writers, and both give us a list of all the naturalists of repute who have done service to herpetology, up to the date of their works. As many of these are introduced in the body of my work, let us glance at the progress of ophiology since the date of these two distinguished authors. In zoology as much as in any branch of science progressiveness is observable; and in zoology the advance of ophiology has of late years been remarkable. In 1843, when Schlegel’s Essai sur la Physionomie des Serpents, 1837, was translated into English by Dr. Thos. Stewart Traill, of the University of Edinburgh, he mentioned as a reason for curtailing the original (and not adding the atlas containing 421 figures, with charts and tables), that the low state of ophiology in this country did not invite a larger work, and ‘deters booksellers from undertaking such costly illustrations;’ but he hoped to be useful to science by cultivating a branch of zoology hitherto neglected. Ten years prior to that date, viz. 1833, the monthly scientific magazine The Zoologist was started; in introducing which the Editor, Mr. Ed. Newman, wrote: ‘To begin, the attempt to combine scientific truths with readable English has been considered by my friends one of surpassing rashness;’ that he had ‘many solicitations to desist from so hopeless a task,’ and many ‘supplications to introduce a few Latin descriptions to give it a scientific character,’ science being then confined to the scientific alone. Nevertheless the Zoologist has survived half a century, and under able editorship has taken its stand as a popular as well as scientific journal. Formerly you might have hunted the pages of such magazines year after year without finding mention of an ‘odious snake;’ but within the last decade, not only this but other periodicals have frequently opened their pages to ophiology, and a considerable removal of prejudice is noticeable.
Mr. Newman felt encouraged by the success attending the publication of White’s Selborne, that being one of the first works to induce a practical study of nature. Yet, until the appearance of Bell’s British Reptiles in 1849, our present subject occupied but very stinted space in literature. Indeed, we must admit that as a nation we English have followed, not taken, the lead as naturalists. So long ago as 1709, Lawson in his History of Carolina lamented the ‘misfortune that most of our Travellers who go to this vast Continent are of the meaner Sort, and generally of very slender Education; hired laborers and merchants to trade among the Indians in remote parts.’ ... ‘The French outstrip us in nice Observations,’ he said. ‘First by their numerous Clergy; their Missionaries being obedient to their Superiors.’ Secondly by gentlemen accompanying these religious missions, sent out to explore and make discoveries and to keep strict journals, which duly were handed over to science. And what Lawson remarked of the American colonies was extended to wherever the French, Portuguese, and Italians established religious communities. We find our book-shelves ever enriched by foreign naturalists.
In Germany, also, ophiology was far in advance of us. Lenz, Helmann, Effeldt, and many others pursued the study practically; and produced some valuable results in their printed works, which unfortunately are too little known in England. Doubtless because we in England have so few native reptiles, there is less inducement to concern ourselves about them. Not so in America, where herpetology soon found many enthusiasts; and the researches of Holbrooke, Emmons, De Kay, and Weir Mitchell were published within a few years of each other. Dr. Cantor in India, and Dr. Andrew Smith in South Africa, Drs. Gray and Günther and P. H. Gosse in England, all enriched ophiological literature previous to 1850, to say nothing of the valuable additions to the science dispersed among the Reports and Transactions of the various scientific Societies. After the appearance of Dr. Günther’s important work, The Reptiles of British India, in 1864, published under the auspices of the Ray Society, another fresh impetus was observable, and we had Krefft’s Snakes of Australia, 1869; Indian Snakes, by Dr. E. Nicholson, 1870; culminating in The Thanatophidia of India, by Sir Joseph, then Dr. Fayrer, F.R.S., C.S.I., etc., Surgeon-Major of the Bengal Army, in 1872, which brings me to the commencement of my own studies.
A few years ago, I knew nothing whatever about snakes; and to them, though deriving my chief pleasures from an inherited love of all things in nature, a faint interest at a respectful distance, was all I accorded. In Virginia and Florida, where a country life and a gorgeous flora enticed my steps into wild and secluded districts, we not unfrequently saw them and one or two ‘narrow escapes’ seasoned the pages of my notebook. When in such rambles we caught sight of one, we flew at our utmost speed, encountering the far greater danger of treading on a venomous one in our precipitous flight, than in shunning the probably innocent one from which we were fleeing.
My first startling adventure in Virginia was more ridiculous than dangerous. We were about to cross a little rivulet that ran rippling through a wood, in which there were many such to ford. Often fallen boughs or drifting logs, dragged into the shallow parts by the negroes, served as stepping-stones. These becoming blackened in the water, and partially covered with tangled drift-weed, were so familiar a sight that, without pausing to observe, I was making a spring, when my companion caught hold of my dress, crying out, ‘Don’t step on them! They will bite you!’ The supposed shining and tangled boughs were two large black snakes commonly known as ‘Racers,’ enjoying a bath; but until I had hastily regained the top of the bank, alarmed at the excitement of my young friend, I did not discover the nature of our intended stepping-stones. The snakes were not venomous, but very ‘spiteful,’ and might have resented the interruption by sharp bites. In moving, they probably would have caused me to fall upon them and into the water, when they might have attacked me with unpleasant results. Now, however, my chief vexation was that they got away so quickly, I could learn nothing about them.
Another ‘escape’ was on an intensely hot day, when in early morning we had started for a botanical ramble. Our way lay along a sloping bit of pasture land, bounded on the east and higher ground by a dense wood, which afforded shelter from the sun. Beguiled on and on, among the lovely copses of exquisite flowering shrubs and a wealth of floral treasures which carpeted the turfy slopes, we were unconscious of time.