RECENT SNAKE-LORE.
THE cheerful Australian writer who signs himself " Sun- downer " contributes a volume of fact and fancy to the snake-stories of the world. The "Tale of the Serpent" (Ghetto and Windus) contains much obvious nonsense, a good deal of noisy humour, and a certain, or uncertain, quantity of facts about the serpents of the Australian bush, where they are very numerous and grow to a large size. The sound grain, sup- posing we rightly distinguish it front the chaff, is of a quality new to most readers, because, though the snakes of the Old World and America are pretty well known, those of the Aus- tralian bush have not before found a writer to celebrate their habits. According to " Sundowner," the big serpent of the bush is the black snake, which sometimes grows to a length of loft. There are also the tiger snake, the diamond snake of Victqria, carpet snakes, and a number of smaller species. The author seems to have had a fancy from boyhood for keeping tame snakes, which became pets about the house; and these
experiences supply the most interesting part of the book. His first tame snake was taken when an infant, and grew to be 8 ft. long. When it arrived at years of discretion, it made a hole for itself in the yard, whence it came out regularly in the morning for a milk breakfast, and then retired to it or went out for a crawl in the bush. Other Hack snakes used to come to visit it, the social life of these reptiles being rather a marked feature in this species. They were always given milk, and would then crawl away out of the house. A handsome diamond snake kept as a pet came to an end by drinking too much of the rum-and-milk put out in a tub for the shearers to drink before they started work early in the morning. Every black snake has its home, for which it makes at nightfall, and many of the tales of men being chased by snakes are perhaps founded on the fact that the snakes hole lies somewhere down the path or track on which the visitor is walking, and the snake hurries along, thinking that it is going to be cut off from its home. If the man runs, the snake crawls faster, and appears to be giving chase.
The writer apparently used to do a certain amount of busi- ness with the Museum authorities in the way of collecting and selling specimens. He notes a few curious facts about the difficulties of keeping them in captivity. Naturally, the snakes of Australia have a period of lethargy each year, for some three months, when the system reposes. If they are kept in captivity in such a way that they miss this period of repose in the winter season, their system suffers. During the spring and summer they seem dazed and to have no energy. " Sundoil7ner " says :—" During one summer we had a big black snake that missed his lethargy through our lending him to an old professor down in Sydney, who wanted to count his scales and generally examine him for some scientific purpose. When he was sent home again I soon saw what was the matter with him, so I concocted a little winter for him on his own account. Rolling him up in an old horse-blanket, I stuck him inside an old ice-chest that my mother did not use, and be had a couple of refreshing months there, coming out in the autumn as fresh as paint. It must have surprised him when the next winter came so soon, but he showed no signs of astonishment, and went off into his lethargy without a hiss." This maybe one of " Sundowner's " jokes; but we take it that his list of illnesses from which tame snakes suffer is genuine. Among them are colds and something like pneumonia, indigestion, and liver complaints. They are also easily damaged internally by rough handling. The black snakes, like most others, are carnivorous, and the rabbit plague provides them with unlimited meals in the form of young rabbits. Probably the snakes are quite as useful as imported weasels in killing them off.
The problem of what snakes live on in some places is diffi- cult to solve. In the waterless sandy deserts on parts of the frontier between Baluchistan and Afghanistan, places in which there is almost nothing but shifting sand, and that burning hot, snakes, and especially a species of viper, swarm. It is the same in some of the deserts of Arizona. What is probably the ultimate or bed-rock food of these and other reptiles is the common house-fly, or other related flies. These creatures abound in deserts, though the kind of stuff from which flies are supposed to be bred is not commonly found where there is no refuse from houses, and no dead birds or quadrupeds. But Mr. Fountain saw dead bodies of snakes and lizards covered with flies, and a human corpse lying fifty miles out in the desert quite black with the crea- tures. In the same way vast swarms of flies are found along sea-beaches, where they are bred apparently from eggs laid in the rotting seaweed. Spiders, ant-lions, and lizards feed on the desert flies, and the snakes devour both flies and the eaters of flies. " Sundowner" mentions a Fiji snake which is a great fly-eater and a useful pet in the house. Match- ing snakes to fight against one another was one of the peculiarly national institutions of the district near the Clarence River, where the author declares that all fight- ing snakes above a certain weight have their value, and that a man will throw down a snake on the bar counter and ask the barman to "change it." The amusement appears to be as old as the days of the Exodus ; but the tiger snake and black snake seem to like fighting for fighting's sake. Whether they use the poison-fangs or not " Sundowner " does not say; but apparently no harm beyond the slight physical injury of the bite happens to the bitten, the battles being more like those of toads and lizards. Fascination by snakes is a
subject on which the writer has something to say, though he cannot resist describing the feelings of a snake who tried
to fascinate a stuffed canary. He states that only some species use this means of catching prey, that it is usually
birds which fall victims, and that the snake will hang down.
wards from a branch and swing to and fro while the bird twitters " idiotically " and gradually comes hopping down
until within reach. The cobra of the Cape fascinates birds by coiling itself on a branch, erecting its head, and swinging to and fro. "Sundowner" states that the snake will go on "fascinating" and keeping the bird twittering and unable to leave the tree in which it is "for hours," and that if the bird is driven away. it comes back. This may be a "yarn."
But from the curious fascination which non-terrifying objects, such as " lark glitters," have for some birds, and their apparent inability to resist hovering round the lure, the far greater mesmerising power of the serpent may be conjectured. Move- ment, more or less regular, is always part of the means of fascination employed by snakes. Their fondness for music of any kind is not extended to the sound of the human voice singing, which snakes clearly do not appreciate at all. They only care for " instrumental music," which includes the con- certina, tom-tom, and Jew's harp. But from experiments made in this country it was evident that they like the bag- pipes best.
In the columns of the Field a recurrent snake question appears and creates correspondence at great length,—viz.,
whether snakes swallow their young, or rather let them run down their throats, when frightened. Persons are always found ready to vouch for the fact, while others write to prove that a snake's throat is so made that this is impossible. On Herodotus's principle that it is best to chronicle what you hear, and that anything may happen in the fulness of time, the persons who set down what they think they saw are quite justified in doing so. Also, as most snakes can draw down their throat, and along their body to their digestive regions, objects larger round than their own bodies at normal times,
there seems no reason whatever why a snake of the circum- ference of a three-inch hawser should not be able to
let its young crawl down its throat when they are the size of pencils, if they wish to do so. To those who say that the whole thing is impossible and a fable the following facts may be commended. At the New York "Zoo" there is a large indoor pool for water birds. Some thirty species are kept there, from pelicans down to pigmy Javan ducks. In the last Report but one of the Society it is noted that the birds become very friendly, and often play together. The pelicans' amusement is to pick up the pigmy ducks in the big pouches under their beaks, the little ducks disappearing from view as the pelican's beak closes. The pelicans then pitch them up in the air as they do a big fish before they swallow it, and catch the duck in the pouch, like a person tossing a pancake. This is for amusement. The writer men- tioned this to a well-known African explorer whose investiga- tions among the central lakes and mountains have been chronicled in more than one work of surpassing interest. He said that a scene witnessed by himself seemed to explain this
play of the pelicans. He came suddenly round a corner of high reeds on an African river, when the canoe almost ran on to a pelican with some newly hatched young. The bird, surprised and unwilling to leave the young, just scooped them up in its big pouch, and swam off with them among the reeds. Thus the pelican, though it does not feed its young with its own blood, according to ancient tradition, does "swallow them," so to speak; and if the throat of a snake allows it to take its young part-way "indoors," there is no particular reason why it should not.
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