[Contents]CHAPTER XXXIVSNAKES AND LIZARDS“I propose to-day to undertake the defense of reptiles, which many people fear and dislike, even look upon with horror. I have shown you what services are rendered by bats despite the repugnance we feel for them. These animals, regarded by us as hideous and treated as enemies, I have brought you to look upon as valuable helpers, veritable swallows of the night, devoted to the extermination of twilight insects. As soon as reason illuminates the darkness of prejudice the detested creature is found to be a very useful animal. In like manner I shall now try to make you separate the false from the true in respect to the reptiles. Let us begin with the snake.“If to explain our dislike for bats we mention their strange and repulsive appearance, we have not the same excuse in regard to snakes. Their slender form is not lacking in grace, the suppleness they display in their undulating movements is pleasing to the eye, and their scaly skin is decorated with well-defined colors that are prettily arranged. Our aversion, then, must be otherwise explained. Some serpents are venomous; they are armed with a formidable and death-dealing weapon. Certainly[261]it is not for these that I ask your favor. Indeed, if it were in my power to exterminate them all I would gladly free the earth of their presence. But others—and these are far more numerous—are not venomous and consequently are perfectly harmless unless they are large enough to hurt us by muscular force, which is not rare in the hot countries of the equator, but never to be feared in our part of the world, where the largest snake is not so strong as a mere child. Thus it is that some are much to be feared on account of their venom, while others, at least those of this region, are not in the least dangerous. But we are all too prone to lose sight of this difference in serpents. The evil reputation of the one with venomous fangs is fastened on all the others, so that we abhor them all alike because we believe them all to be venomous. In France we have only one venomous serpent, the viper, and all the others, large as well as small, are perfectly harmless and we will refer to them simply as snakes.“In one of our former talks1I told you about the viper, describing its form and coloring, the structure of its venomous apparatus, and the effects of its bite. I here repeat the principal facts then related, in order to give you now a connected account of our serpents as a class.“All serpents dart back and forth between their lips, with extreme rapidity, something that looks like a black thread, of great flexibility and ending in a fork. Many persons believe this to be the reptile’s[262]weapon, the sting, as they call it, whereas in reality it is nothing but the tongue—a quite inoffensive tongue, which the creature uses for catching insects to feed upon, and also for expressing in its own peculiar fashion the passions that agitate it. This last it does by shooting the tongue swiftly in and out between the lips. All serpents without exception have a tongue, but in our country it is only the viper that possesses the terrible apparatus for injecting venom.Head of Snake, showing Forked TongueHead of Snake, showing Forked Tongue“This apparatus is composed, first, of two fangs or long, sharp teeth, situated in the upper jaw. Unlike ordinary teeth, these fangs are not fixed firmly in their sockets, but can at the creature’s will stand up for attack or lie down in a groove of the gum and remain there as harmless as a stiletto in its sheath. In this way the viper runs no risk of wounding itself. The fangs are hollow and pierced near the point with a very small opening through which the venom is discharged into the wound they give. Finally, at the base of each fang is a small pocket or sac filled with a venomous liquid. It is to all appearance a perfectly harmless liquid, odorless and tasteless, so that you would take it for nothing but water. When the viper strikes with its fangs, the venom sac discharges a drop of its contents into the tiny channel perforating the fang, and the liquid is injected into the wound. It is by mixing with the blood that the venom produces its terrifying effects.”[263]“I remember all that very well,” said Jules, “and also what you said must be done to prevent the mixing of the venom with the blood in general that circulates through the body.”“And I also told you that the viper haunts by preference warm, rocky hills; it lurks under stones and in underbrush. In color it is brown or reddish, with a dark zigzag stripe along the back and a row of spots on each side, each spot fitting into one of the angles made by the zigzag stripe. Its stomach is slate-color and its head rather triangular in shape, being broader than the neck and running to a blunt point at the mouth. The viper is timid by nature and attacks man only in self-defense. Its movements are abrupt, irregular, and sluggish.”“What does it live on?” Jules inquired. “Does it eat nothing but little insects that it can catch with its tongue?”“Its chief food consists of larger prey, which calls for the use of its venomous weapon. Small field-rats, field-mice, meadow-mice, moles, sometimes frogs and even toads, are its usual victims. The animal attacked by the reptile is first stung with the venomous fangs, whereupon it is immediately overcome with agony. As soon as the prey is dead the viper twines its folds about the lifeless body, squeezes it tightly, and subjects it to a sort of kneading process in order to make it smaller; for the victim must be gulped down in one mouthful even if it exceeds the serpent itself in size. This preparation finished, the gullet opens to its utmost width and the two jaws,[264]seeming almost to fly apart, seize with their sharp teeth, which point backward toward the throat, the head of the mole or field-mouse or whatever the small game may be. A flow of saliva then streams over the body to make it slip down more readily, but it is so large a mouthful that the viper manages to swallow it only by a violent effort. The throat dilates and contracts, the jaws move alternately from right to left and from left to right, to coax the unwieldy mass downward, and so it is that this laborious swallowing is protracted sometimes for hours, sometimes for a whole day. Indeed, it not seldom occurs that the forward half of the prey is already undergoing digestion in the stomach while the hind quarters still stick in the throat or protrude from the mouth.“Let us pass on to the common snakes. These have no venomous fangs in the jaw; their teeth are small and even and lacking in strength, useful as an aid in holding the captured prey and helping in the swallowing of it (which is as difficult as with the viper), but incapable of inflicting a serious wound. These creatures, too, are extremely timid, fleeing at the slightest alarm; but if retreat is cut off they put on a bold front to impose on the enemy, coiling themselves in a spiral, erecting the head, swaying this way and that, hissing, and trying to bite. There is no need, however, to be afraid; a scratch of no more importance than a pin-prick would be the worst that could befall one. You would suffer far[265]greater injury by thrusting your hand into a bramble-bush.”“If it isn’t any more dangerous than that,” Jules declared boldly, “I shan’t mind taking up snakes in my hands.”“I do not tell you this to encourage you to capture these creatures and make playthings of them; on the contrary, I wish you to leave them alone, but I also desire to remove an unwarranted fear, the fear of snakes that is so prevalent in country districts. Fear, always an evil counselor, never does a good deed in prompting one to throw stones at a harmless creature found in a hole in the wall. The passer-by attacks it with his stick if he sees it crossing the road, and the mower in the hay-field cuts off its head with his scythe. Were they not listening to a foolish fear and yielding to an unreasonable dislike, they would leave the poor thing in peace and no one would be the worse for it, as snakes not only are harmless, but they render us excellent service by destroying numerous insects and small rodents such as meadow-mice and field-mice. From this point of view, snakes deserve protection and not the hatred that is commonly felt for them.”“But,” objected Louis, “they say snakes can charm birds by their gaze and draw them into their open mouth by first overcoming them with their poisonous breath. Helpless, the bird plunges headlong into the creature’s horrible gullet.”“There is a grain of truth in what you say, but far more untruth, the result of popular superstition[266]which deliberately credits the serpent with sorcery. In the first place, the breath of a serpent, or of any reptile whatever, has nothing poisonous about it, nothing magically attractive, nothing supernatural. You all have too much common sense to make it necessary for me to dwell on these ridiculous tales. There remains only the belief that the bird is charmed by the reptile’s hard, fixed gaze. The marvel of this amounts in reality to very little.“Some of our snakes are very fond of birds’ eggs. They climb trees, search out the nests, and eat the eggs when the mothers are not there to protect them. More than one human nest-robber who thought he was seizing a jay’s or a blackbird’s brood has put his hand instead on the cold coiled body of a reptile in the bottom of the nest. I have even known instances in which the plunderers, seized with horror at this unexpected encounter, fell backward from the tree-top and did not come out of the adventure without broken bones. A warning to others. The larger snakes do not content themselves with eggs, but devour the young birds as well, even those that are outside the nest when they can catch them, which fortunately is not easy. Imagine an innocent little bird surprised by a snake in the underbrush. The poor little thing suddenly sees before it a mouth horribly wide open and glittering eyes regarding it steadily. Scared almost to death, the bird loses its head and is powerless to take flight. In vain it beats its wings, cries plaintively, and finally falls from the branch, paralyzed and dying.[267]The monster lying in wait catches the poor thing in its mouth.“The power to charm that serpents are supposed to have is therefore in reality only the power so to terrify a bird that it cannot fly. We ourselves, on being suddenly confronted by an appalling danger—do we always retain the presence of mind necessary to face it? Are there not plenty of persons that get bewildered, lose their wits completely, and make matters worse by acting foolishly? The charm exerted by serpents all comes down simply to that. I am inclined to believe that a bird, on being surprised by a snake, usually is able to overcome the first feeling of terror and to take flight as soon as it sees the reptile’s horrible gullet yawning to receive the expected prey; and so the serpent’s attempt to paralyze its victim has a chance to succeed only with very young and inexperienced birds. What paralyzes with fright an ignorant young nestling hardly affects a bird that is master of itself; what terrifies a child or a person of weak character makes little impression on a man capable of keeping his head in time of danger. Acquire the habit, children, of keeping calm in times of danger or excitement, and you will avoid many calamities and escape many perils, just as the bird that does not lose its head escapes the snake lurking in ambush to catch it.“One of our common snakes is the water-snake, so called because it likes damp places and frequents still water, where it shows itself a good swimmer in its pursuit of little fish, water insects, and tadpoles.[268]It lays its eggs usually in dunghills, where they will be hatched out by the heat. These eggs are of an elongated oval shape, with a soft shell resembling wet parchment. In size they are about as large as a magpie’s eggs. They are joined together in a string by a semi-liquid viscous substance. On stirring a heap of dung, country people often turn up with their forks these soft-shelled eggs whose origin is unknown to them and from which, to their great surprise, come young serpents. They declare them to be roosters’ eggs, unnatural eggs, magic eggs that produce snakes instead of chickens; and it would be difficult to convince them that this is not true. As for you, my children, if you ever happen to hear any one speak of eggs laid by roosters in dunghills and producing serpents, remember that they are simply the eggs of the water-snake.“Put no faith, either, in still another fable current in our villages. According to this, all snakes have a consuming desire to enter the mouth and then the body of any one sleeping on the cool grass. To rid the patient of this inconvenient guest the serpent must be lured from its retreat by the smell of warm milk. Of course this is pure nonsense, as no animal can wish to take refuge in the human stomach, where it would be digested, reduced to pap, by the same process that digests our bread.“One often meets in hay-fields or even in hay itself a small reptile differing from the snake in structure. It is known as the slow-worm or blind-worm. Its head is small and merges into the body[269]without narrowing into a neck; furthermore, the tail is blunt, so that the two ends of the body are of nearly the same shape and leave us for a moment in doubt as to which is the head and which the tail. The slow-worm is covered with very smooth and shiny scales. The back is silvery yellow and marked from one end to the other by three black lines which change, as the worm grows older, to a succession of dots and even disappear entirely at last. The stomach is blackish. On being disturbed the slow-worm forcibly contracts, stiffens, and becomes almost as rigid as a lizard’s tail.“Many people believe that this little creature is venomous, and even to touch it or meet its eye is thought to be very dangerous. But its evil reputation is quite undeserved. The slow-worm is really the most harmless of reptiles: it does not even offer to bite in its own defense, but contents itself with stiffening until it is as rigid as a wooden rod. It lives chiefly on beetles and earthworms.“Now to conclude this brief account of snakes: vipers excepted, not one of our serpents is venomous, none can harm us, the bite of none is in the least dangerous. Snakes do us no injury whatever; on the contrary, they help us by destroying a multitude of insects and small rodents. Let us, then, conquer an unreasonable horror and hatred and suffer these helpers of ours to live in peace.“Equal consideration should be shown to lizards, those agile hunters of insects and even of small fur-bearing[270]game such as rodents. Who does not know the little gray lizard, lover of sunny walls? It lies in wait for flies, darting its tongue in and out as if in play; and it ransacks one hole after another in quest of insects. It is the protector of wall-fruit.Serpentiform LizardSerpentiform Lizard“When on a fine spring day the sun shines warm on some wall or hillside, the lizard may be seen stretched out comfortably on this wall or on the new grass covering the hillside. It steeps itself delightedly in the healthful warmth; it shows its pleasure by gentle undulations of its relaxed tail and by its shining eyes; and presently, perhaps, it darts like an arrow to seize some small prey or to find a spot still more to its liking. Far from fleeing at the approach of man, it seems to regard him with friendliness; but at the slightest alarming sound, as the fall of a leaf, it rolls over, falls, and remains motionless for some moments, as if stunned by the fall; or else it darts away, vanishes from sight, reappears, hides again, then comes forth once more, turns and twists until the eye can hardly follow it, folds itself over several times, and finally retires to some shelter to recover from its fright.“As useful as it is graceful in form, the little gray lizard lives on flies, crickets, grasshoppers, earthworms, and nearly all insects that prey upon our fruit and grain; thus it would be much to our advantage[271]if the species were more widely scattered. The greater our supply of gray lizards, the faster should we see the enemies of our gardens disappear.“The green lizard so common everywhere—in hedges, on the skirts of woods, in thickets having an undergrowth of wild grass—attains a length of three decimeters. The back shows an elegant embroidery of green pearls set off with black and yellow dots. This little creature is marvelously swift of foot, darting into the midst of underbrush and dry leaves with a suddenness that always takes one by surprise and causes at first a little start of fear. When it is attacked by a dog it throws itself at the assailant’s snout and plants its teeth with such determination that it will let itself be carried along and even killed rather than relax its hold. But its bite is not at all venomous; it merely punctures the skin without leaving in the wound any kind of poison. In captivity it becomes very tame, very gentle, and willingly lets itself be handled. Its food consists chiefly of insects.“The olive-growing districts of France have another lizard, larger, stronger, heavier, and more squat in form than the common green lizard. The people of Provence call it the glass-bead, but scientists give it the name of ocellated lizard from the small black spots scattered like little eyes (ocelli, in Latin) on the bluish-green background of the creature’s back. This lizard haunts dry hillsides exposed to the full heat of the sun. It bores for itself a deep hole in some sandy spot, generally under[272]the shelter of a projecting stone. Trusting to its formidable bite, it is very bold. Not only does it leap at dogs’ snouts, but it will even attack man if it finds itself too hard-pressed. This courage has won for it a terrible reputation among country people, who think it very dangerous, more venomous than even the viper.“Now, Uncle Paul, who knows this lizard as well as he knows the bottom of his own pocket, who has watched its movements for whole days in order to learn its habits, who has examined its teeth very carefully so as to be able to report with authority on its bite, and who has even let himself be bitten by it in order to leave no doubt on the subject—Uncle Paul, I say, declares that this dreaded lizard does not deserve the reputation it bears. It is not venomous in the least; it bites hard, it is true, nipping the skin and even taking away a piece, but without poisoning the wound; in a word, it is no more to be feared than the common green lizard. Its food consists of beetles, grasshoppers, and small field-rats; and therefore, despite the fear it inspires, I have no hesitation in placing the ocellated lizard in the class of helpers.”[273]1See “The Story-Book of Science.”↑
[Contents]CHAPTER XXXIVSNAKES AND LIZARDS“I propose to-day to undertake the defense of reptiles, which many people fear and dislike, even look upon with horror. I have shown you what services are rendered by bats despite the repugnance we feel for them. These animals, regarded by us as hideous and treated as enemies, I have brought you to look upon as valuable helpers, veritable swallows of the night, devoted to the extermination of twilight insects. As soon as reason illuminates the darkness of prejudice the detested creature is found to be a very useful animal. In like manner I shall now try to make you separate the false from the true in respect to the reptiles. Let us begin with the snake.“If to explain our dislike for bats we mention their strange and repulsive appearance, we have not the same excuse in regard to snakes. Their slender form is not lacking in grace, the suppleness they display in their undulating movements is pleasing to the eye, and their scaly skin is decorated with well-defined colors that are prettily arranged. Our aversion, then, must be otherwise explained. Some serpents are venomous; they are armed with a formidable and death-dealing weapon. Certainly[261]it is not for these that I ask your favor. Indeed, if it were in my power to exterminate them all I would gladly free the earth of their presence. But others—and these are far more numerous—are not venomous and consequently are perfectly harmless unless they are large enough to hurt us by muscular force, which is not rare in the hot countries of the equator, but never to be feared in our part of the world, where the largest snake is not so strong as a mere child. Thus it is that some are much to be feared on account of their venom, while others, at least those of this region, are not in the least dangerous. But we are all too prone to lose sight of this difference in serpents. The evil reputation of the one with venomous fangs is fastened on all the others, so that we abhor them all alike because we believe them all to be venomous. In France we have only one venomous serpent, the viper, and all the others, large as well as small, are perfectly harmless and we will refer to them simply as snakes.“In one of our former talks1I told you about the viper, describing its form and coloring, the structure of its venomous apparatus, and the effects of its bite. I here repeat the principal facts then related, in order to give you now a connected account of our serpents as a class.“All serpents dart back and forth between their lips, with extreme rapidity, something that looks like a black thread, of great flexibility and ending in a fork. Many persons believe this to be the reptile’s[262]weapon, the sting, as they call it, whereas in reality it is nothing but the tongue—a quite inoffensive tongue, which the creature uses for catching insects to feed upon, and also for expressing in its own peculiar fashion the passions that agitate it. This last it does by shooting the tongue swiftly in and out between the lips. All serpents without exception have a tongue, but in our country it is only the viper that possesses the terrible apparatus for injecting venom.Head of Snake, showing Forked TongueHead of Snake, showing Forked Tongue“This apparatus is composed, first, of two fangs or long, sharp teeth, situated in the upper jaw. Unlike ordinary teeth, these fangs are not fixed firmly in their sockets, but can at the creature’s will stand up for attack or lie down in a groove of the gum and remain there as harmless as a stiletto in its sheath. In this way the viper runs no risk of wounding itself. The fangs are hollow and pierced near the point with a very small opening through which the venom is discharged into the wound they give. Finally, at the base of each fang is a small pocket or sac filled with a venomous liquid. It is to all appearance a perfectly harmless liquid, odorless and tasteless, so that you would take it for nothing but water. When the viper strikes with its fangs, the venom sac discharges a drop of its contents into the tiny channel perforating the fang, and the liquid is injected into the wound. It is by mixing with the blood that the venom produces its terrifying effects.”[263]“I remember all that very well,” said Jules, “and also what you said must be done to prevent the mixing of the venom with the blood in general that circulates through the body.”“And I also told you that the viper haunts by preference warm, rocky hills; it lurks under stones and in underbrush. In color it is brown or reddish, with a dark zigzag stripe along the back and a row of spots on each side, each spot fitting into one of the angles made by the zigzag stripe. Its stomach is slate-color and its head rather triangular in shape, being broader than the neck and running to a blunt point at the mouth. The viper is timid by nature and attacks man only in self-defense. Its movements are abrupt, irregular, and sluggish.”“What does it live on?” Jules inquired. “Does it eat nothing but little insects that it can catch with its tongue?”“Its chief food consists of larger prey, which calls for the use of its venomous weapon. Small field-rats, field-mice, meadow-mice, moles, sometimes frogs and even toads, are its usual victims. The animal attacked by the reptile is first stung with the venomous fangs, whereupon it is immediately overcome with agony. As soon as the prey is dead the viper twines its folds about the lifeless body, squeezes it tightly, and subjects it to a sort of kneading process in order to make it smaller; for the victim must be gulped down in one mouthful even if it exceeds the serpent itself in size. This preparation finished, the gullet opens to its utmost width and the two jaws,[264]seeming almost to fly apart, seize with their sharp teeth, which point backward toward the throat, the head of the mole or field-mouse or whatever the small game may be. A flow of saliva then streams over the body to make it slip down more readily, but it is so large a mouthful that the viper manages to swallow it only by a violent effort. The throat dilates and contracts, the jaws move alternately from right to left and from left to right, to coax the unwieldy mass downward, and so it is that this laborious swallowing is protracted sometimes for hours, sometimes for a whole day. Indeed, it not seldom occurs that the forward half of the prey is already undergoing digestion in the stomach while the hind quarters still stick in the throat or protrude from the mouth.“Let us pass on to the common snakes. These have no venomous fangs in the jaw; their teeth are small and even and lacking in strength, useful as an aid in holding the captured prey and helping in the swallowing of it (which is as difficult as with the viper), but incapable of inflicting a serious wound. These creatures, too, are extremely timid, fleeing at the slightest alarm; but if retreat is cut off they put on a bold front to impose on the enemy, coiling themselves in a spiral, erecting the head, swaying this way and that, hissing, and trying to bite. There is no need, however, to be afraid; a scratch of no more importance than a pin-prick would be the worst that could befall one. You would suffer far[265]greater injury by thrusting your hand into a bramble-bush.”“If it isn’t any more dangerous than that,” Jules declared boldly, “I shan’t mind taking up snakes in my hands.”“I do not tell you this to encourage you to capture these creatures and make playthings of them; on the contrary, I wish you to leave them alone, but I also desire to remove an unwarranted fear, the fear of snakes that is so prevalent in country districts. Fear, always an evil counselor, never does a good deed in prompting one to throw stones at a harmless creature found in a hole in the wall. The passer-by attacks it with his stick if he sees it crossing the road, and the mower in the hay-field cuts off its head with his scythe. Were they not listening to a foolish fear and yielding to an unreasonable dislike, they would leave the poor thing in peace and no one would be the worse for it, as snakes not only are harmless, but they render us excellent service by destroying numerous insects and small rodents such as meadow-mice and field-mice. From this point of view, snakes deserve protection and not the hatred that is commonly felt for them.”“But,” objected Louis, “they say snakes can charm birds by their gaze and draw them into their open mouth by first overcoming them with their poisonous breath. Helpless, the bird plunges headlong into the creature’s horrible gullet.”“There is a grain of truth in what you say, but far more untruth, the result of popular superstition[266]which deliberately credits the serpent with sorcery. In the first place, the breath of a serpent, or of any reptile whatever, has nothing poisonous about it, nothing magically attractive, nothing supernatural. You all have too much common sense to make it necessary for me to dwell on these ridiculous tales. There remains only the belief that the bird is charmed by the reptile’s hard, fixed gaze. The marvel of this amounts in reality to very little.“Some of our snakes are very fond of birds’ eggs. They climb trees, search out the nests, and eat the eggs when the mothers are not there to protect them. More than one human nest-robber who thought he was seizing a jay’s or a blackbird’s brood has put his hand instead on the cold coiled body of a reptile in the bottom of the nest. I have even known instances in which the plunderers, seized with horror at this unexpected encounter, fell backward from the tree-top and did not come out of the adventure without broken bones. A warning to others. The larger snakes do not content themselves with eggs, but devour the young birds as well, even those that are outside the nest when they can catch them, which fortunately is not easy. Imagine an innocent little bird surprised by a snake in the underbrush. The poor little thing suddenly sees before it a mouth horribly wide open and glittering eyes regarding it steadily. Scared almost to death, the bird loses its head and is powerless to take flight. In vain it beats its wings, cries plaintively, and finally falls from the branch, paralyzed and dying.[267]The monster lying in wait catches the poor thing in its mouth.“The power to charm that serpents are supposed to have is therefore in reality only the power so to terrify a bird that it cannot fly. We ourselves, on being suddenly confronted by an appalling danger—do we always retain the presence of mind necessary to face it? Are there not plenty of persons that get bewildered, lose their wits completely, and make matters worse by acting foolishly? The charm exerted by serpents all comes down simply to that. I am inclined to believe that a bird, on being surprised by a snake, usually is able to overcome the first feeling of terror and to take flight as soon as it sees the reptile’s horrible gullet yawning to receive the expected prey; and so the serpent’s attempt to paralyze its victim has a chance to succeed only with very young and inexperienced birds. What paralyzes with fright an ignorant young nestling hardly affects a bird that is master of itself; what terrifies a child or a person of weak character makes little impression on a man capable of keeping his head in time of danger. Acquire the habit, children, of keeping calm in times of danger or excitement, and you will avoid many calamities and escape many perils, just as the bird that does not lose its head escapes the snake lurking in ambush to catch it.“One of our common snakes is the water-snake, so called because it likes damp places and frequents still water, where it shows itself a good swimmer in its pursuit of little fish, water insects, and tadpoles.[268]It lays its eggs usually in dunghills, where they will be hatched out by the heat. These eggs are of an elongated oval shape, with a soft shell resembling wet parchment. In size they are about as large as a magpie’s eggs. They are joined together in a string by a semi-liquid viscous substance. On stirring a heap of dung, country people often turn up with their forks these soft-shelled eggs whose origin is unknown to them and from which, to their great surprise, come young serpents. They declare them to be roosters’ eggs, unnatural eggs, magic eggs that produce snakes instead of chickens; and it would be difficult to convince them that this is not true. As for you, my children, if you ever happen to hear any one speak of eggs laid by roosters in dunghills and producing serpents, remember that they are simply the eggs of the water-snake.“Put no faith, either, in still another fable current in our villages. According to this, all snakes have a consuming desire to enter the mouth and then the body of any one sleeping on the cool grass. To rid the patient of this inconvenient guest the serpent must be lured from its retreat by the smell of warm milk. Of course this is pure nonsense, as no animal can wish to take refuge in the human stomach, where it would be digested, reduced to pap, by the same process that digests our bread.“One often meets in hay-fields or even in hay itself a small reptile differing from the snake in structure. It is known as the slow-worm or blind-worm. Its head is small and merges into the body[269]without narrowing into a neck; furthermore, the tail is blunt, so that the two ends of the body are of nearly the same shape and leave us for a moment in doubt as to which is the head and which the tail. The slow-worm is covered with very smooth and shiny scales. The back is silvery yellow and marked from one end to the other by three black lines which change, as the worm grows older, to a succession of dots and even disappear entirely at last. The stomach is blackish. On being disturbed the slow-worm forcibly contracts, stiffens, and becomes almost as rigid as a lizard’s tail.“Many people believe that this little creature is venomous, and even to touch it or meet its eye is thought to be very dangerous. But its evil reputation is quite undeserved. The slow-worm is really the most harmless of reptiles: it does not even offer to bite in its own defense, but contents itself with stiffening until it is as rigid as a wooden rod. It lives chiefly on beetles and earthworms.“Now to conclude this brief account of snakes: vipers excepted, not one of our serpents is venomous, none can harm us, the bite of none is in the least dangerous. Snakes do us no injury whatever; on the contrary, they help us by destroying a multitude of insects and small rodents. Let us, then, conquer an unreasonable horror and hatred and suffer these helpers of ours to live in peace.“Equal consideration should be shown to lizards, those agile hunters of insects and even of small fur-bearing[270]game such as rodents. Who does not know the little gray lizard, lover of sunny walls? It lies in wait for flies, darting its tongue in and out as if in play; and it ransacks one hole after another in quest of insects. It is the protector of wall-fruit.Serpentiform LizardSerpentiform Lizard“When on a fine spring day the sun shines warm on some wall or hillside, the lizard may be seen stretched out comfortably on this wall or on the new grass covering the hillside. It steeps itself delightedly in the healthful warmth; it shows its pleasure by gentle undulations of its relaxed tail and by its shining eyes; and presently, perhaps, it darts like an arrow to seize some small prey or to find a spot still more to its liking. Far from fleeing at the approach of man, it seems to regard him with friendliness; but at the slightest alarming sound, as the fall of a leaf, it rolls over, falls, and remains motionless for some moments, as if stunned by the fall; or else it darts away, vanishes from sight, reappears, hides again, then comes forth once more, turns and twists until the eye can hardly follow it, folds itself over several times, and finally retires to some shelter to recover from its fright.“As useful as it is graceful in form, the little gray lizard lives on flies, crickets, grasshoppers, earthworms, and nearly all insects that prey upon our fruit and grain; thus it would be much to our advantage[271]if the species were more widely scattered. The greater our supply of gray lizards, the faster should we see the enemies of our gardens disappear.“The green lizard so common everywhere—in hedges, on the skirts of woods, in thickets having an undergrowth of wild grass—attains a length of three decimeters. The back shows an elegant embroidery of green pearls set off with black and yellow dots. This little creature is marvelously swift of foot, darting into the midst of underbrush and dry leaves with a suddenness that always takes one by surprise and causes at first a little start of fear. When it is attacked by a dog it throws itself at the assailant’s snout and plants its teeth with such determination that it will let itself be carried along and even killed rather than relax its hold. But its bite is not at all venomous; it merely punctures the skin without leaving in the wound any kind of poison. In captivity it becomes very tame, very gentle, and willingly lets itself be handled. Its food consists chiefly of insects.“The olive-growing districts of France have another lizard, larger, stronger, heavier, and more squat in form than the common green lizard. The people of Provence call it the glass-bead, but scientists give it the name of ocellated lizard from the small black spots scattered like little eyes (ocelli, in Latin) on the bluish-green background of the creature’s back. This lizard haunts dry hillsides exposed to the full heat of the sun. It bores for itself a deep hole in some sandy spot, generally under[272]the shelter of a projecting stone. Trusting to its formidable bite, it is very bold. Not only does it leap at dogs’ snouts, but it will even attack man if it finds itself too hard-pressed. This courage has won for it a terrible reputation among country people, who think it very dangerous, more venomous than even the viper.“Now, Uncle Paul, who knows this lizard as well as he knows the bottom of his own pocket, who has watched its movements for whole days in order to learn its habits, who has examined its teeth very carefully so as to be able to report with authority on its bite, and who has even let himself be bitten by it in order to leave no doubt on the subject—Uncle Paul, I say, declares that this dreaded lizard does not deserve the reputation it bears. It is not venomous in the least; it bites hard, it is true, nipping the skin and even taking away a piece, but without poisoning the wound; in a word, it is no more to be feared than the common green lizard. Its food consists of beetles, grasshoppers, and small field-rats; and therefore, despite the fear it inspires, I have no hesitation in placing the ocellated lizard in the class of helpers.”[273]1See “The Story-Book of Science.”↑
CHAPTER XXXIVSNAKES AND LIZARDS
“I propose to-day to undertake the defense of reptiles, which many people fear and dislike, even look upon with horror. I have shown you what services are rendered by bats despite the repugnance we feel for them. These animals, regarded by us as hideous and treated as enemies, I have brought you to look upon as valuable helpers, veritable swallows of the night, devoted to the extermination of twilight insects. As soon as reason illuminates the darkness of prejudice the detested creature is found to be a very useful animal. In like manner I shall now try to make you separate the false from the true in respect to the reptiles. Let us begin with the snake.“If to explain our dislike for bats we mention their strange and repulsive appearance, we have not the same excuse in regard to snakes. Their slender form is not lacking in grace, the suppleness they display in their undulating movements is pleasing to the eye, and their scaly skin is decorated with well-defined colors that are prettily arranged. Our aversion, then, must be otherwise explained. Some serpents are venomous; they are armed with a formidable and death-dealing weapon. Certainly[261]it is not for these that I ask your favor. Indeed, if it were in my power to exterminate them all I would gladly free the earth of their presence. But others—and these are far more numerous—are not venomous and consequently are perfectly harmless unless they are large enough to hurt us by muscular force, which is not rare in the hot countries of the equator, but never to be feared in our part of the world, where the largest snake is not so strong as a mere child. Thus it is that some are much to be feared on account of their venom, while others, at least those of this region, are not in the least dangerous. But we are all too prone to lose sight of this difference in serpents. The evil reputation of the one with venomous fangs is fastened on all the others, so that we abhor them all alike because we believe them all to be venomous. In France we have only one venomous serpent, the viper, and all the others, large as well as small, are perfectly harmless and we will refer to them simply as snakes.“In one of our former talks1I told you about the viper, describing its form and coloring, the structure of its venomous apparatus, and the effects of its bite. I here repeat the principal facts then related, in order to give you now a connected account of our serpents as a class.“All serpents dart back and forth between their lips, with extreme rapidity, something that looks like a black thread, of great flexibility and ending in a fork. Many persons believe this to be the reptile’s[262]weapon, the sting, as they call it, whereas in reality it is nothing but the tongue—a quite inoffensive tongue, which the creature uses for catching insects to feed upon, and also for expressing in its own peculiar fashion the passions that agitate it. This last it does by shooting the tongue swiftly in and out between the lips. All serpents without exception have a tongue, but in our country it is only the viper that possesses the terrible apparatus for injecting venom.Head of Snake, showing Forked TongueHead of Snake, showing Forked Tongue“This apparatus is composed, first, of two fangs or long, sharp teeth, situated in the upper jaw. Unlike ordinary teeth, these fangs are not fixed firmly in their sockets, but can at the creature’s will stand up for attack or lie down in a groove of the gum and remain there as harmless as a stiletto in its sheath. In this way the viper runs no risk of wounding itself. The fangs are hollow and pierced near the point with a very small opening through which the venom is discharged into the wound they give. Finally, at the base of each fang is a small pocket or sac filled with a venomous liquid. It is to all appearance a perfectly harmless liquid, odorless and tasteless, so that you would take it for nothing but water. When the viper strikes with its fangs, the venom sac discharges a drop of its contents into the tiny channel perforating the fang, and the liquid is injected into the wound. It is by mixing with the blood that the venom produces its terrifying effects.”[263]“I remember all that very well,” said Jules, “and also what you said must be done to prevent the mixing of the venom with the blood in general that circulates through the body.”“And I also told you that the viper haunts by preference warm, rocky hills; it lurks under stones and in underbrush. In color it is brown or reddish, with a dark zigzag stripe along the back and a row of spots on each side, each spot fitting into one of the angles made by the zigzag stripe. Its stomach is slate-color and its head rather triangular in shape, being broader than the neck and running to a blunt point at the mouth. The viper is timid by nature and attacks man only in self-defense. Its movements are abrupt, irregular, and sluggish.”“What does it live on?” Jules inquired. “Does it eat nothing but little insects that it can catch with its tongue?”“Its chief food consists of larger prey, which calls for the use of its venomous weapon. Small field-rats, field-mice, meadow-mice, moles, sometimes frogs and even toads, are its usual victims. The animal attacked by the reptile is first stung with the venomous fangs, whereupon it is immediately overcome with agony. As soon as the prey is dead the viper twines its folds about the lifeless body, squeezes it tightly, and subjects it to a sort of kneading process in order to make it smaller; for the victim must be gulped down in one mouthful even if it exceeds the serpent itself in size. This preparation finished, the gullet opens to its utmost width and the two jaws,[264]seeming almost to fly apart, seize with their sharp teeth, which point backward toward the throat, the head of the mole or field-mouse or whatever the small game may be. A flow of saliva then streams over the body to make it slip down more readily, but it is so large a mouthful that the viper manages to swallow it only by a violent effort. The throat dilates and contracts, the jaws move alternately from right to left and from left to right, to coax the unwieldy mass downward, and so it is that this laborious swallowing is protracted sometimes for hours, sometimes for a whole day. Indeed, it not seldom occurs that the forward half of the prey is already undergoing digestion in the stomach while the hind quarters still stick in the throat or protrude from the mouth.“Let us pass on to the common snakes. These have no venomous fangs in the jaw; their teeth are small and even and lacking in strength, useful as an aid in holding the captured prey and helping in the swallowing of it (which is as difficult as with the viper), but incapable of inflicting a serious wound. These creatures, too, are extremely timid, fleeing at the slightest alarm; but if retreat is cut off they put on a bold front to impose on the enemy, coiling themselves in a spiral, erecting the head, swaying this way and that, hissing, and trying to bite. There is no need, however, to be afraid; a scratch of no more importance than a pin-prick would be the worst that could befall one. You would suffer far[265]greater injury by thrusting your hand into a bramble-bush.”“If it isn’t any more dangerous than that,” Jules declared boldly, “I shan’t mind taking up snakes in my hands.”“I do not tell you this to encourage you to capture these creatures and make playthings of them; on the contrary, I wish you to leave them alone, but I also desire to remove an unwarranted fear, the fear of snakes that is so prevalent in country districts. Fear, always an evil counselor, never does a good deed in prompting one to throw stones at a harmless creature found in a hole in the wall. The passer-by attacks it with his stick if he sees it crossing the road, and the mower in the hay-field cuts off its head with his scythe. Were they not listening to a foolish fear and yielding to an unreasonable dislike, they would leave the poor thing in peace and no one would be the worse for it, as snakes not only are harmless, but they render us excellent service by destroying numerous insects and small rodents such as meadow-mice and field-mice. From this point of view, snakes deserve protection and not the hatred that is commonly felt for them.”“But,” objected Louis, “they say snakes can charm birds by their gaze and draw them into their open mouth by first overcoming them with their poisonous breath. Helpless, the bird plunges headlong into the creature’s horrible gullet.”“There is a grain of truth in what you say, but far more untruth, the result of popular superstition[266]which deliberately credits the serpent with sorcery. In the first place, the breath of a serpent, or of any reptile whatever, has nothing poisonous about it, nothing magically attractive, nothing supernatural. You all have too much common sense to make it necessary for me to dwell on these ridiculous tales. There remains only the belief that the bird is charmed by the reptile’s hard, fixed gaze. The marvel of this amounts in reality to very little.“Some of our snakes are very fond of birds’ eggs. They climb trees, search out the nests, and eat the eggs when the mothers are not there to protect them. More than one human nest-robber who thought he was seizing a jay’s or a blackbird’s brood has put his hand instead on the cold coiled body of a reptile in the bottom of the nest. I have even known instances in which the plunderers, seized with horror at this unexpected encounter, fell backward from the tree-top and did not come out of the adventure without broken bones. A warning to others. The larger snakes do not content themselves with eggs, but devour the young birds as well, even those that are outside the nest when they can catch them, which fortunately is not easy. Imagine an innocent little bird surprised by a snake in the underbrush. The poor little thing suddenly sees before it a mouth horribly wide open and glittering eyes regarding it steadily. Scared almost to death, the bird loses its head and is powerless to take flight. In vain it beats its wings, cries plaintively, and finally falls from the branch, paralyzed and dying.[267]The monster lying in wait catches the poor thing in its mouth.“The power to charm that serpents are supposed to have is therefore in reality only the power so to terrify a bird that it cannot fly. We ourselves, on being suddenly confronted by an appalling danger—do we always retain the presence of mind necessary to face it? Are there not plenty of persons that get bewildered, lose their wits completely, and make matters worse by acting foolishly? The charm exerted by serpents all comes down simply to that. I am inclined to believe that a bird, on being surprised by a snake, usually is able to overcome the first feeling of terror and to take flight as soon as it sees the reptile’s horrible gullet yawning to receive the expected prey; and so the serpent’s attempt to paralyze its victim has a chance to succeed only with very young and inexperienced birds. What paralyzes with fright an ignorant young nestling hardly affects a bird that is master of itself; what terrifies a child or a person of weak character makes little impression on a man capable of keeping his head in time of danger. Acquire the habit, children, of keeping calm in times of danger or excitement, and you will avoid many calamities and escape many perils, just as the bird that does not lose its head escapes the snake lurking in ambush to catch it.“One of our common snakes is the water-snake, so called because it likes damp places and frequents still water, where it shows itself a good swimmer in its pursuit of little fish, water insects, and tadpoles.[268]It lays its eggs usually in dunghills, where they will be hatched out by the heat. These eggs are of an elongated oval shape, with a soft shell resembling wet parchment. In size they are about as large as a magpie’s eggs. They are joined together in a string by a semi-liquid viscous substance. On stirring a heap of dung, country people often turn up with their forks these soft-shelled eggs whose origin is unknown to them and from which, to their great surprise, come young serpents. They declare them to be roosters’ eggs, unnatural eggs, magic eggs that produce snakes instead of chickens; and it would be difficult to convince them that this is not true. As for you, my children, if you ever happen to hear any one speak of eggs laid by roosters in dunghills and producing serpents, remember that they are simply the eggs of the water-snake.“Put no faith, either, in still another fable current in our villages. According to this, all snakes have a consuming desire to enter the mouth and then the body of any one sleeping on the cool grass. To rid the patient of this inconvenient guest the serpent must be lured from its retreat by the smell of warm milk. Of course this is pure nonsense, as no animal can wish to take refuge in the human stomach, where it would be digested, reduced to pap, by the same process that digests our bread.“One often meets in hay-fields or even in hay itself a small reptile differing from the snake in structure. It is known as the slow-worm or blind-worm. Its head is small and merges into the body[269]without narrowing into a neck; furthermore, the tail is blunt, so that the two ends of the body are of nearly the same shape and leave us for a moment in doubt as to which is the head and which the tail. The slow-worm is covered with very smooth and shiny scales. The back is silvery yellow and marked from one end to the other by three black lines which change, as the worm grows older, to a succession of dots and even disappear entirely at last. The stomach is blackish. On being disturbed the slow-worm forcibly contracts, stiffens, and becomes almost as rigid as a lizard’s tail.“Many people believe that this little creature is venomous, and even to touch it or meet its eye is thought to be very dangerous. But its evil reputation is quite undeserved. The slow-worm is really the most harmless of reptiles: it does not even offer to bite in its own defense, but contents itself with stiffening until it is as rigid as a wooden rod. It lives chiefly on beetles and earthworms.“Now to conclude this brief account of snakes: vipers excepted, not one of our serpents is venomous, none can harm us, the bite of none is in the least dangerous. Snakes do us no injury whatever; on the contrary, they help us by destroying a multitude of insects and small rodents. Let us, then, conquer an unreasonable horror and hatred and suffer these helpers of ours to live in peace.“Equal consideration should be shown to lizards, those agile hunters of insects and even of small fur-bearing[270]game such as rodents. Who does not know the little gray lizard, lover of sunny walls? It lies in wait for flies, darting its tongue in and out as if in play; and it ransacks one hole after another in quest of insects. It is the protector of wall-fruit.Serpentiform LizardSerpentiform Lizard“When on a fine spring day the sun shines warm on some wall or hillside, the lizard may be seen stretched out comfortably on this wall or on the new grass covering the hillside. It steeps itself delightedly in the healthful warmth; it shows its pleasure by gentle undulations of its relaxed tail and by its shining eyes; and presently, perhaps, it darts like an arrow to seize some small prey or to find a spot still more to its liking. Far from fleeing at the approach of man, it seems to regard him with friendliness; but at the slightest alarming sound, as the fall of a leaf, it rolls over, falls, and remains motionless for some moments, as if stunned by the fall; or else it darts away, vanishes from sight, reappears, hides again, then comes forth once more, turns and twists until the eye can hardly follow it, folds itself over several times, and finally retires to some shelter to recover from its fright.“As useful as it is graceful in form, the little gray lizard lives on flies, crickets, grasshoppers, earthworms, and nearly all insects that prey upon our fruit and grain; thus it would be much to our advantage[271]if the species were more widely scattered. The greater our supply of gray lizards, the faster should we see the enemies of our gardens disappear.“The green lizard so common everywhere—in hedges, on the skirts of woods, in thickets having an undergrowth of wild grass—attains a length of three decimeters. The back shows an elegant embroidery of green pearls set off with black and yellow dots. This little creature is marvelously swift of foot, darting into the midst of underbrush and dry leaves with a suddenness that always takes one by surprise and causes at first a little start of fear. When it is attacked by a dog it throws itself at the assailant’s snout and plants its teeth with such determination that it will let itself be carried along and even killed rather than relax its hold. But its bite is not at all venomous; it merely punctures the skin without leaving in the wound any kind of poison. In captivity it becomes very tame, very gentle, and willingly lets itself be handled. Its food consists chiefly of insects.“The olive-growing districts of France have another lizard, larger, stronger, heavier, and more squat in form than the common green lizard. The people of Provence call it the glass-bead, but scientists give it the name of ocellated lizard from the small black spots scattered like little eyes (ocelli, in Latin) on the bluish-green background of the creature’s back. This lizard haunts dry hillsides exposed to the full heat of the sun. It bores for itself a deep hole in some sandy spot, generally under[272]the shelter of a projecting stone. Trusting to its formidable bite, it is very bold. Not only does it leap at dogs’ snouts, but it will even attack man if it finds itself too hard-pressed. This courage has won for it a terrible reputation among country people, who think it very dangerous, more venomous than even the viper.“Now, Uncle Paul, who knows this lizard as well as he knows the bottom of his own pocket, who has watched its movements for whole days in order to learn its habits, who has examined its teeth very carefully so as to be able to report with authority on its bite, and who has even let himself be bitten by it in order to leave no doubt on the subject—Uncle Paul, I say, declares that this dreaded lizard does not deserve the reputation it bears. It is not venomous in the least; it bites hard, it is true, nipping the skin and even taking away a piece, but without poisoning the wound; in a word, it is no more to be feared than the common green lizard. Its food consists of beetles, grasshoppers, and small field-rats; and therefore, despite the fear it inspires, I have no hesitation in placing the ocellated lizard in the class of helpers.”[273]
“I propose to-day to undertake the defense of reptiles, which many people fear and dislike, even look upon with horror. I have shown you what services are rendered by bats despite the repugnance we feel for them. These animals, regarded by us as hideous and treated as enemies, I have brought you to look upon as valuable helpers, veritable swallows of the night, devoted to the extermination of twilight insects. As soon as reason illuminates the darkness of prejudice the detested creature is found to be a very useful animal. In like manner I shall now try to make you separate the false from the true in respect to the reptiles. Let us begin with the snake.
“If to explain our dislike for bats we mention their strange and repulsive appearance, we have not the same excuse in regard to snakes. Their slender form is not lacking in grace, the suppleness they display in their undulating movements is pleasing to the eye, and their scaly skin is decorated with well-defined colors that are prettily arranged. Our aversion, then, must be otherwise explained. Some serpents are venomous; they are armed with a formidable and death-dealing weapon. Certainly[261]it is not for these that I ask your favor. Indeed, if it were in my power to exterminate them all I would gladly free the earth of their presence. But others—and these are far more numerous—are not venomous and consequently are perfectly harmless unless they are large enough to hurt us by muscular force, which is not rare in the hot countries of the equator, but never to be feared in our part of the world, where the largest snake is not so strong as a mere child. Thus it is that some are much to be feared on account of their venom, while others, at least those of this region, are not in the least dangerous. But we are all too prone to lose sight of this difference in serpents. The evil reputation of the one with venomous fangs is fastened on all the others, so that we abhor them all alike because we believe them all to be venomous. In France we have only one venomous serpent, the viper, and all the others, large as well as small, are perfectly harmless and we will refer to them simply as snakes.
“In one of our former talks1I told you about the viper, describing its form and coloring, the structure of its venomous apparatus, and the effects of its bite. I here repeat the principal facts then related, in order to give you now a connected account of our serpents as a class.
“All serpents dart back and forth between their lips, with extreme rapidity, something that looks like a black thread, of great flexibility and ending in a fork. Many persons believe this to be the reptile’s[262]weapon, the sting, as they call it, whereas in reality it is nothing but the tongue—a quite inoffensive tongue, which the creature uses for catching insects to feed upon, and also for expressing in its own peculiar fashion the passions that agitate it. This last it does by shooting the tongue swiftly in and out between the lips. All serpents without exception have a tongue, but in our country it is only the viper that possesses the terrible apparatus for injecting venom.
Head of Snake, showing Forked TongueHead of Snake, showing Forked Tongue
Head of Snake, showing Forked Tongue
“This apparatus is composed, first, of two fangs or long, sharp teeth, situated in the upper jaw. Unlike ordinary teeth, these fangs are not fixed firmly in their sockets, but can at the creature’s will stand up for attack or lie down in a groove of the gum and remain there as harmless as a stiletto in its sheath. In this way the viper runs no risk of wounding itself. The fangs are hollow and pierced near the point with a very small opening through which the venom is discharged into the wound they give. Finally, at the base of each fang is a small pocket or sac filled with a venomous liquid. It is to all appearance a perfectly harmless liquid, odorless and tasteless, so that you would take it for nothing but water. When the viper strikes with its fangs, the venom sac discharges a drop of its contents into the tiny channel perforating the fang, and the liquid is injected into the wound. It is by mixing with the blood that the venom produces its terrifying effects.”[263]
“I remember all that very well,” said Jules, “and also what you said must be done to prevent the mixing of the venom with the blood in general that circulates through the body.”
“And I also told you that the viper haunts by preference warm, rocky hills; it lurks under stones and in underbrush. In color it is brown or reddish, with a dark zigzag stripe along the back and a row of spots on each side, each spot fitting into one of the angles made by the zigzag stripe. Its stomach is slate-color and its head rather triangular in shape, being broader than the neck and running to a blunt point at the mouth. The viper is timid by nature and attacks man only in self-defense. Its movements are abrupt, irregular, and sluggish.”
“What does it live on?” Jules inquired. “Does it eat nothing but little insects that it can catch with its tongue?”
“Its chief food consists of larger prey, which calls for the use of its venomous weapon. Small field-rats, field-mice, meadow-mice, moles, sometimes frogs and even toads, are its usual victims. The animal attacked by the reptile is first stung with the venomous fangs, whereupon it is immediately overcome with agony. As soon as the prey is dead the viper twines its folds about the lifeless body, squeezes it tightly, and subjects it to a sort of kneading process in order to make it smaller; for the victim must be gulped down in one mouthful even if it exceeds the serpent itself in size. This preparation finished, the gullet opens to its utmost width and the two jaws,[264]seeming almost to fly apart, seize with their sharp teeth, which point backward toward the throat, the head of the mole or field-mouse or whatever the small game may be. A flow of saliva then streams over the body to make it slip down more readily, but it is so large a mouthful that the viper manages to swallow it only by a violent effort. The throat dilates and contracts, the jaws move alternately from right to left and from left to right, to coax the unwieldy mass downward, and so it is that this laborious swallowing is protracted sometimes for hours, sometimes for a whole day. Indeed, it not seldom occurs that the forward half of the prey is already undergoing digestion in the stomach while the hind quarters still stick in the throat or protrude from the mouth.
“Let us pass on to the common snakes. These have no venomous fangs in the jaw; their teeth are small and even and lacking in strength, useful as an aid in holding the captured prey and helping in the swallowing of it (which is as difficult as with the viper), but incapable of inflicting a serious wound. These creatures, too, are extremely timid, fleeing at the slightest alarm; but if retreat is cut off they put on a bold front to impose on the enemy, coiling themselves in a spiral, erecting the head, swaying this way and that, hissing, and trying to bite. There is no need, however, to be afraid; a scratch of no more importance than a pin-prick would be the worst that could befall one. You would suffer far[265]greater injury by thrusting your hand into a bramble-bush.”
“If it isn’t any more dangerous than that,” Jules declared boldly, “I shan’t mind taking up snakes in my hands.”
“I do not tell you this to encourage you to capture these creatures and make playthings of them; on the contrary, I wish you to leave them alone, but I also desire to remove an unwarranted fear, the fear of snakes that is so prevalent in country districts. Fear, always an evil counselor, never does a good deed in prompting one to throw stones at a harmless creature found in a hole in the wall. The passer-by attacks it with his stick if he sees it crossing the road, and the mower in the hay-field cuts off its head with his scythe. Were they not listening to a foolish fear and yielding to an unreasonable dislike, they would leave the poor thing in peace and no one would be the worse for it, as snakes not only are harmless, but they render us excellent service by destroying numerous insects and small rodents such as meadow-mice and field-mice. From this point of view, snakes deserve protection and not the hatred that is commonly felt for them.”
“But,” objected Louis, “they say snakes can charm birds by their gaze and draw them into their open mouth by first overcoming them with their poisonous breath. Helpless, the bird plunges headlong into the creature’s horrible gullet.”
“There is a grain of truth in what you say, but far more untruth, the result of popular superstition[266]which deliberately credits the serpent with sorcery. In the first place, the breath of a serpent, or of any reptile whatever, has nothing poisonous about it, nothing magically attractive, nothing supernatural. You all have too much common sense to make it necessary for me to dwell on these ridiculous tales. There remains only the belief that the bird is charmed by the reptile’s hard, fixed gaze. The marvel of this amounts in reality to very little.
“Some of our snakes are very fond of birds’ eggs. They climb trees, search out the nests, and eat the eggs when the mothers are not there to protect them. More than one human nest-robber who thought he was seizing a jay’s or a blackbird’s brood has put his hand instead on the cold coiled body of a reptile in the bottom of the nest. I have even known instances in which the plunderers, seized with horror at this unexpected encounter, fell backward from the tree-top and did not come out of the adventure without broken bones. A warning to others. The larger snakes do not content themselves with eggs, but devour the young birds as well, even those that are outside the nest when they can catch them, which fortunately is not easy. Imagine an innocent little bird surprised by a snake in the underbrush. The poor little thing suddenly sees before it a mouth horribly wide open and glittering eyes regarding it steadily. Scared almost to death, the bird loses its head and is powerless to take flight. In vain it beats its wings, cries plaintively, and finally falls from the branch, paralyzed and dying.[267]The monster lying in wait catches the poor thing in its mouth.
“The power to charm that serpents are supposed to have is therefore in reality only the power so to terrify a bird that it cannot fly. We ourselves, on being suddenly confronted by an appalling danger—do we always retain the presence of mind necessary to face it? Are there not plenty of persons that get bewildered, lose their wits completely, and make matters worse by acting foolishly? The charm exerted by serpents all comes down simply to that. I am inclined to believe that a bird, on being surprised by a snake, usually is able to overcome the first feeling of terror and to take flight as soon as it sees the reptile’s horrible gullet yawning to receive the expected prey; and so the serpent’s attempt to paralyze its victim has a chance to succeed only with very young and inexperienced birds. What paralyzes with fright an ignorant young nestling hardly affects a bird that is master of itself; what terrifies a child or a person of weak character makes little impression on a man capable of keeping his head in time of danger. Acquire the habit, children, of keeping calm in times of danger or excitement, and you will avoid many calamities and escape many perils, just as the bird that does not lose its head escapes the snake lurking in ambush to catch it.
“One of our common snakes is the water-snake, so called because it likes damp places and frequents still water, where it shows itself a good swimmer in its pursuit of little fish, water insects, and tadpoles.[268]It lays its eggs usually in dunghills, where they will be hatched out by the heat. These eggs are of an elongated oval shape, with a soft shell resembling wet parchment. In size they are about as large as a magpie’s eggs. They are joined together in a string by a semi-liquid viscous substance. On stirring a heap of dung, country people often turn up with their forks these soft-shelled eggs whose origin is unknown to them and from which, to their great surprise, come young serpents. They declare them to be roosters’ eggs, unnatural eggs, magic eggs that produce snakes instead of chickens; and it would be difficult to convince them that this is not true. As for you, my children, if you ever happen to hear any one speak of eggs laid by roosters in dunghills and producing serpents, remember that they are simply the eggs of the water-snake.
“Put no faith, either, in still another fable current in our villages. According to this, all snakes have a consuming desire to enter the mouth and then the body of any one sleeping on the cool grass. To rid the patient of this inconvenient guest the serpent must be lured from its retreat by the smell of warm milk. Of course this is pure nonsense, as no animal can wish to take refuge in the human stomach, where it would be digested, reduced to pap, by the same process that digests our bread.
“One often meets in hay-fields or even in hay itself a small reptile differing from the snake in structure. It is known as the slow-worm or blind-worm. Its head is small and merges into the body[269]without narrowing into a neck; furthermore, the tail is blunt, so that the two ends of the body are of nearly the same shape and leave us for a moment in doubt as to which is the head and which the tail. The slow-worm is covered with very smooth and shiny scales. The back is silvery yellow and marked from one end to the other by three black lines which change, as the worm grows older, to a succession of dots and even disappear entirely at last. The stomach is blackish. On being disturbed the slow-worm forcibly contracts, stiffens, and becomes almost as rigid as a lizard’s tail.
“Many people believe that this little creature is venomous, and even to touch it or meet its eye is thought to be very dangerous. But its evil reputation is quite undeserved. The slow-worm is really the most harmless of reptiles: it does not even offer to bite in its own defense, but contents itself with stiffening until it is as rigid as a wooden rod. It lives chiefly on beetles and earthworms.
“Now to conclude this brief account of snakes: vipers excepted, not one of our serpents is venomous, none can harm us, the bite of none is in the least dangerous. Snakes do us no injury whatever; on the contrary, they help us by destroying a multitude of insects and small rodents. Let us, then, conquer an unreasonable horror and hatred and suffer these helpers of ours to live in peace.
“Equal consideration should be shown to lizards, those agile hunters of insects and even of small fur-bearing[270]game such as rodents. Who does not know the little gray lizard, lover of sunny walls? It lies in wait for flies, darting its tongue in and out as if in play; and it ransacks one hole after another in quest of insects. It is the protector of wall-fruit.
Serpentiform LizardSerpentiform Lizard
Serpentiform Lizard
“When on a fine spring day the sun shines warm on some wall or hillside, the lizard may be seen stretched out comfortably on this wall or on the new grass covering the hillside. It steeps itself delightedly in the healthful warmth; it shows its pleasure by gentle undulations of its relaxed tail and by its shining eyes; and presently, perhaps, it darts like an arrow to seize some small prey or to find a spot still more to its liking. Far from fleeing at the approach of man, it seems to regard him with friendliness; but at the slightest alarming sound, as the fall of a leaf, it rolls over, falls, and remains motionless for some moments, as if stunned by the fall; or else it darts away, vanishes from sight, reappears, hides again, then comes forth once more, turns and twists until the eye can hardly follow it, folds itself over several times, and finally retires to some shelter to recover from its fright.
“As useful as it is graceful in form, the little gray lizard lives on flies, crickets, grasshoppers, earthworms, and nearly all insects that prey upon our fruit and grain; thus it would be much to our advantage[271]if the species were more widely scattered. The greater our supply of gray lizards, the faster should we see the enemies of our gardens disappear.
“The green lizard so common everywhere—in hedges, on the skirts of woods, in thickets having an undergrowth of wild grass—attains a length of three decimeters. The back shows an elegant embroidery of green pearls set off with black and yellow dots. This little creature is marvelously swift of foot, darting into the midst of underbrush and dry leaves with a suddenness that always takes one by surprise and causes at first a little start of fear. When it is attacked by a dog it throws itself at the assailant’s snout and plants its teeth with such determination that it will let itself be carried along and even killed rather than relax its hold. But its bite is not at all venomous; it merely punctures the skin without leaving in the wound any kind of poison. In captivity it becomes very tame, very gentle, and willingly lets itself be handled. Its food consists chiefly of insects.
“The olive-growing districts of France have another lizard, larger, stronger, heavier, and more squat in form than the common green lizard. The people of Provence call it the glass-bead, but scientists give it the name of ocellated lizard from the small black spots scattered like little eyes (ocelli, in Latin) on the bluish-green background of the creature’s back. This lizard haunts dry hillsides exposed to the full heat of the sun. It bores for itself a deep hole in some sandy spot, generally under[272]the shelter of a projecting stone. Trusting to its formidable bite, it is very bold. Not only does it leap at dogs’ snouts, but it will even attack man if it finds itself too hard-pressed. This courage has won for it a terrible reputation among country people, who think it very dangerous, more venomous than even the viper.
“Now, Uncle Paul, who knows this lizard as well as he knows the bottom of his own pocket, who has watched its movements for whole days in order to learn its habits, who has examined its teeth very carefully so as to be able to report with authority on its bite, and who has even let himself be bitten by it in order to leave no doubt on the subject—Uncle Paul, I say, declares that this dreaded lizard does not deserve the reputation it bears. It is not venomous in the least; it bites hard, it is true, nipping the skin and even taking away a piece, but without poisoning the wound; in a word, it is no more to be feared than the common green lizard. Its food consists of beetles, grasshoppers, and small field-rats; and therefore, despite the fear it inspires, I have no hesitation in placing the ocellated lizard in the class of helpers.”[273]
1See “The Story-Book of Science.”↑
1See “The Story-Book of Science.”↑
1See “The Story-Book of Science.”↑
1See “The Story-Book of Science.”↑