A few years ago, near Hayward’s Heath in Sussex, some men who were levelling the ground for building, dug out of a bank at a depth of from four to five feet, upwards of one hundred slow worms and as many small lizards, all in a torpid state. It was during February.
At the end of September more recently, a farmer in Wales, who with his labourers was removing a heap of manure, came upon an extraordinary bed of snakes and slow worms, and no less than 352 were killed, together with an enormous quantity of eggs; ‘thousands in clusters were destroyed.’ Three of the snakes were of immense size, and one hundred of them nine to twelve inches long.’ These latter were probably slow worms, and the three ‘immense’ ones ring snakes. One feels curious to know whether judgment for this act of wanton cruelty visited that farmer in a destruction of his crops next year by the mice and insects from which these harmless reptiles would have saved them!
The general reptilian instincts are the same in all climates where the temperature is similar. In Australia, as Krefft tells us, this is a grand time among schoolboys for ‘snake-hunting.’ They lay traps of large flat stones on open sunny ridges where the reptiles are likely to resort. Six to ten specimens of different species are often taken under one such stone. Even the venomous kinds may be easily captured and transferred to a bag in their half-dormant condition. Sometimes in lifting a stone, a dozen or more handsome and beautiful lizards are found among their ophidian cousins. The Wallaby hunters generally provide themselves with a collecting-bag, and thousands of snakes have thus been transferred to museums. So expert do the hunters become, that in eight years, the same author affirms, not one accident has occurred from a venomous species. From May to September in Australia, timid persons need be in no fear of snakes in the ‘scrub.’ The larger and more dangerous species retire deep into the ground, and only the young ones under stones. Warm days entice them out for an hour or two, and they retire again at night, just as is the case with those of the United States.
The ancients were aware of this hibernation of reptiles; and Pliny, who, having sometimes a foundation of fact to build upon, is all the more dangerous from his fabulous superstructure, writes, ‘The viper is the only serpent that conceals itself in the earth. It can live there without taking food for a whole year. They are not venomous when they are asleep,’ he sagely adds. Vipers can live without food for even more than a year, and so can other snakes; but this often is irrespective of hibernation, and of this more will be said presently.
A still stronger evidence of vitality or suspended animation is witnessed in the extraordinary custom of packing the poor wretched snakes in air-tight bottles, which some barbarous (the word here in both senses may be used) people adopt. A Cerastes arrived in England in a bottle, which had been hermetically closed for six weeks, and it revived. It was so crowded into the bottle as to look quite dead, but revived directly it was released, and struck a fowl, which died instantly! Sometimes a bottle or jar is literally crowded with ophidian captives, that are certainly out of harm’s way so far as others are concerned, and travel in a compact compass; but it stands to reason that even when they survive this close imprisonment, they are not in a very lively condition, and the large mortality which is found in most collections may be imputed to a great extent to the unhealthy condition in which they arrive after injudicious packing. Nailed up in air-tight boxes, is a very ordinary mode of transportation, a species of cruelty which would raise a cry of horror were the captive any other than a despised ‘reptile!’ In connection with breathing or not breathing, and powers of endurance, such packing receives only a passing mention here, but is one that should be thoroughly exposed in the Animal World and similar papers.
One more singular example of periodical repose, but which can scarcely be called either hibernation or estivation, is seen in the sea snakes, the Hydrophidæ of the Eastern Ocean. Of these Dr. Cantor affirms that they are seen so soundly asleep on the surface of the water, that a ship passing among them does not awaken them. This is the more remarkable because the eyes of sea snakes are organized to endure the glare of light only when modified or subdued through water, and are easily affected when out of it, the reptiles becoming dazzled, and even blinded, by bright sunshine. So that we must suppose some peculiar insensibility of nerve in these, or a cessation of active functions during their repose analogous to the hibernation of land snakes. Another interesting inquiry suggests itself: viz. How does one ascertain that an open-eyed snake is ‘asleep’? We called that Racer (p. 64) ‘asleep,’ as it appeared to be quite unconscious of interruption, and did not move at our approach.
