LESSON XXXIX.
WISER THAN ANY BEAST OF THE FIELD.
“Beyond the shadows of the shipI watched the water snakes;They moved in tracks of shining white;And when they reared, the elfish lightFell off in hoary flakes.”
“Beyond the shadows of the shipI watched the water snakes;They moved in tracks of shining white;And when they reared, the elfish lightFell off in hoary flakes.”
“Beyond the shadows of the shipI watched the water snakes;They moved in tracks of shining white;And when they reared, the elfish lightFell off in hoary flakes.”
“Beyond the shadows of the ship
I watched the water snakes;
They moved in tracks of shining white;
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.”
—Coleridge,Ancient Mariner.
Between man and the snake there seems to be placed an instinctive and unappeasable enmity. The snake, seeing anyhuman being, either glides off in haste, or coils itself up and hisses, or throws itself forward in attack. The human being, on the other hand, experiences fear, disgust, aversion, and seizes stick or stone, or makes use of his heel, if well protected, to kill the snake. “War to the death, and no quarter,” seems to be the cry between the highest of the mammals and the serpent tribe.
OUR NATURAL ENEMY.
OUR NATURAL ENEMY.
“As hideous as a snake” is a common phrase, born of the hatred between man and the ophidian order, but in point of fact, were enmity left out of the question, the creatures of the serpent tribe are not hideous. A lithe, long, cylindrical body, coated with glittering scales, and splendid with all the colors of the rainbow, elegantly arranged in rings, lines, or dots; bright eyes; graceful motions; a tongue that plays to and fro like lightning in an open throat, often of vivid flamecolor; a head sometimes crested as if bearing a royal crown,—these are some of the characteristics of that serpent family, which instinctively we call “hideous” and “hateful.”
To the above briefly noted particulars we may add that the eyes of snakes are lidless and the sight somewhat feeble; the sense of smell is better developed, and the nostrils are placed close to the mouth. The mouth is large proportionately, and opens widely; the tongue is the organ of touch; there are no external ears, and snakes seem to be deficient in hearing. Snakes have no external limbs, except in two or three species, where there are mere rudiments of hind-legs visible. The snake’s body is elastic and capable of enormous distention. It is furnished with a spinal column, and with numerous ribs. The ribs and scutes, or large scales, are the chief organs of locomotion.
The method of crawling shown by the worm, as described in Nature Reader, No. 2, is very much like that of some snakes. There are three ways in which snakes make their progression. First, they may glide forward with a perfectly straight motion, by pushing with the scutes, or large scale-like plates of the under part of the body, to which the ends of the ribs are attached. Second, these scutes may open out as the scales of a fish when scraped backward from head to tail,[74]and on the edges of these opened scute-plates, the snake may walk. Third, they may go forward by pushing; stretching out the body, and then contracting it, and making the same motion over again, these motions being sinuous, or wave-like, from side to side.
The light, smooth body of the snake, provided with numeroussmall, powerful muscles, renders its progress by any of these methods exceedingly rapid. Water snakes swim, waving the body from side to side, and using the tail as an oar is used in sculling. No serpent can move on a perfectly smooth surface, as glass; it must have some ridges, or roughness to resist the motions of the scales and ribs.
Serpents are dumb except for their hiss, which is produced by driving the air swiftly from the lungs. In some snakes the hiss is varied to a whine or hum.
Serpents, like the batrachians, cast off their skins and come out in gleaming new skins which have grown under the old ones. If the serpent for any reason cannot cast its skin at the proper time, it sickens and dies. The cast coat is perfect in form, but is generally turned inside out. Cast snake-skins are sometimes found in the woods by sharp-eyed boys. Sometimes the lucky boy finds a whole skin; at other times the cast skin has been partly destroyed by ants, beetles, or the effects of the weather. Some snakes swallow their cast-off skins.
Snakes usually move about and hunt in the day-time, and sleep at night. They hibernate, or take a long winter sleep, as the lizards do. For hibernation they retire to caves, to holes in logs or in the ground, and may be found torpid, a number rolled closely together. At such times the most poisonous snakes, as the viper and rattlesnake, may be handled without danger. In the spring they begin to revive with the first warm weather.
I remember that when I was a little girl a very beautiful hollow or cave in the river-bank not far from Niagara Fallswas called “The Rattlesnake’s Cove,” because so many snakes lived there. In summer the place was carefully avoided. In early spring, before the snakes awoke from their sleep, this cove was a favorite place for picnics, and the school-boys often went there armed with knives, hatchets, picks, and hoes, and hunted for the torpid snakes and killed them by scores.
In hot countries, where there is no winter to send them off to sleep, the snakes are for some part of the year stupid and drowsy, and lie for several weeks in a nearly comatose condition. In this state they are too dull to be either timid or ill-tempered. On the other hand, when casting their skins, they are exceedingly nervous and vicious.
All snakes are flesh eaters, and have very hearty appetites. They drink a large amount of water, and when a captive snake is well supplied with water, it can live for several weeks without food. However, it is doubtless hungry, and the experiment is a cruel one to try even on a snake.
The serpents have many teeth, sharp, cone-like, and pointing backward. These teeth grow constantly; when they become at last old and worthless, they are at once renewed. Lucky snakes! no toothless gums, no worn-out, broken teeth, no aching teeth, no dentist’s bills. Nature keeps their teeth perfect from infancy to old age.
Snakes lay eggs, and with the one exception of the python, which carries her eggs in a fold of her body, they deposit the eggs in safe places, leave them to hatch by sun heat, and let the little ones take care of themselves as soon as they come forth from the eggs. There are also a few species of snakes which have their little ones born alive, not in the egg. Snakes’ eggs are enclosed in a leathery skin like those of turtles.There is a widely spread story that the young of some kinds of snakes accompany their mother, and in time of danger she stretches open her mouth, and they take refuge in her throat, where they remain safely until the danger is passed. The keepers of the “snake-house” in the London Zoological Garden told me they had never known a case of the kind, and the best scientific writers have found no proofs that such story is true. Therefore this tale is open to grave doubts.
The snake is a creature about which fables have been gathering from the earliest times. The snake was one of the first objects of false worship; coiled in a ring with its tail in its mouth, it was taken as a symbol of eternity. The Magi of the East used it as the emblem of their order and their arts; a serpent twined on a stick was also the emblem of physicians, and of the art of healing. It is strange that a creature exhibiting so many deadly varieties should have been chosen as the insignia of the physician, and not less strange that to the serpent should have been attributed great wisdom. Snakes exhibit fear and anger, but almost no wisdom or anything that seems like reason. Nearly all domestic animals—ants, bees, spiders, and many fishes—show far more forecast, ingenuity, architectural ability, than any snake. And yet “crafty as a snake,” “wise as a serpent,” are frequent expressions.
Snakes vary greatly in their habits: there are snakes which live on the ground, hiding under stones, leaves, or brush, and in rock crevices; other snakes live chiefly in the water, making their holes in the bank below water-mark; others live in trees, and some others almost entirely underground.
To this tribe surrounded by enemies, nature has given abundant means of self-preservation,—swiftness of motion; instinct of instant flight; poison, sometimes deadly to its enemies; vast size and strength, as in some boas and pythons, and especially colorations, which closely imitate their surroundings. Thus ground snakes have, especially on the back and sides, brown, gray, black, and white in spots and markings, which together look much like earth, twigs, pebbles, and dead leaves, so that the snake can scarcely be distinguished from its bed or home. Tree snakes, and snakes that live in grass or mosses, are usually green, marbled, or streaked with black and brown. Snakes from the marshes or muddy banks are nearly black; among the abundant flowers and gayly colored shrubs of the tropics, snakes take very brilliant hues. Snakes of temperate climates are also often tricked out with scarlet, or white or orange stripes and bands.
Snakes are largest, most numerous, and most brightly colored in hot countries. Like all the cold-blooded vertebrates, they delight in hot sunshine, and will lie motionless, basking for hours. In taking a position for this sun-bath, they select a place where they will not be conspicuous. I have often noticed that while a gray snake will stretch itself out in the sun on a bare rock, a green snake never chooses such a post. Instead, the green snake extends itself on a bed of moss, or close, short grass, or if slim and light of body, will crawl up the midrib of a big leaf, or the stalk of a fern frond, where its color is scarcely discernible from the vegetation about it. A dark brown or black snake seems to know that it is tolerably secure lying upon a fallen, decaying tree-trunk. So agray, or black and white snake, may often be seen sunning himself on a fence-rail, or on the top of a stone wall.
There seems to be a common notion that because a creature is a snake, it must be dangerous and poisonous. This is quite wrong, for in point of fact, very few of the numerous serpent families are venomous. The greater number of their species are quite harmless. One of the most dangerous of all snakes, the boa-constrictor, does not kill its prey by poisoning, but by crushing it. In general, the head of the harmless snake is rounded and oblong, while the poisonous species have heads flat and triangular.
Snakes prey upon birds, toads, rats, mice, frogs, gophers, and destroy much harmful vermin. The common snakes, called “milk snakes” and “garter snakes,” which frequent barns, are not at all poisonous, but, on the contrary, are useful, destroying rats and mice. Nearly all snakes are very fond of milk, and will glide up to a bowl of bread and milk, especially if it is warmed, and eat it with great relish. Black snakes are seldom harmful to people, but are cruel enemies of birds, devouring the young and the eggs, and tearing up the nests.
Snakes seem to be able to “charm” or mesmerize small animals, and sometimes even human beings, by fixing their gaze steadfastly upon them. The victim appears to be smitten dumb and motionless with terror, and a bird thus charmed will presently flutter straight toward the open mouth of the snake. I have seen one case of a snake so charming a bird, but I had a better opportunity to study a cat charming a bird, and probably the process is much alike in both.
The cat placed itself on the outside sill of my window, near to a pine tree. A bird presently alighted on the pine tree, nodoubt not observing the cat. The cat fixed its attention on the bird. The cat’s eyes were widely opened, and shone with a peculiar brightness; its head was raised and intent, the fur on its neck and about its face slowly stood up, as if electrified. Except for this rising of the fur, and a certain intensity of life in the whole attitude of the beast, it was as still as if cut from stone. The bird quivered, trembled, looked fixedly at the cat, and finally, with a feeble shake of the wings, fell toward the cat, which bounded to seize it.
FOOTNOTES:[74]Nature Reader, No. 3, Scales and Teeth.
[74]Nature Reader, No. 3, Scales and Teeth.
[74]Nature Reader, No. 3, Scales and Teeth.