of natural history, which, though accumulated by the zeal and industry
of a private individual, far exceeded in extent and magnificence any
collection then in the world. It had been gathered by Albert Seba, a
wealthy apothecary in the Dutch East India Company's service, who
fortunately published an elaborate description of its contents. This
great work, "_Locupletissimi Rerum Naturalium Thesauri accurata
Descriptio_,"--in four volumes folio, published from 1734 to 1765,--is
even now remarkable for the accuracy and beauty of its copious
engravings, which still are referred to as authorities, though the
descriptions are devoid of scientific value. Many of these figures and
descriptions, about whose reality no shadow of doubt exists, are those
of creatures which are altogether unknown to modern science, and some of
them are highly curious.
Serpents seem to have been a special hobby of Seba's; and he has
delineated a vast number of species. Among them are two[141] about which
a singular interest hangs. They are of rather small size; the one pale
yellow, marked with oval reddish spots, the other reddish, with five
green transverse bands. The head in each case has a horny-pointed
muzzle, and the cheeks are furnished with depending wattles of a
coral-red hue.
From the expressions of wonder with which Seba introduces his
descriptions of these animals, it is evident that they were no ordinary
forms. He does not know whether to call them Eels or Serpents, the
critical characters, which in our day would instantly determine this
point, being then scarcely heeded. He calls them "marine," but whether
on any other evidence than the pendent processes of the cheeks, which he
calls "fins," does not appear. But no fish known to naturalists will
answer to these representations. The pointed head, indeed, resembles in
some respects that of _Mur{oe}na_, but this genus of fishes is altogether
destitute of pectoral fins, while the vertically-flattened tail, and the
long dorsal and anal fins confluent around the extremity of the body in
_Mur{oe}na_, are totally unlike these figures. These and all similar fishes
are, moreover, destitute of visible scales; but in these the scaling is
decidedly serpentine, and the second, in particular, has large
symmetrical plates across the belly, while the head in both is shielded
with broad plates like a Colubrine Snake. The tail is drawn out to a
long conical point, without the slightest appearance of compression or
of bordering fins. In one figure there is seen a little projecting point
at the edge of the lower belly, which at first sight suggests the idea
of the anal hook of a _Boa_, but which, by comparison with other
figures, we discover to be intended to represent the projection of the
pre-anal scale. The very minuteness of this character makes it valuable:
its value was doubtless unheeded by the artist, who merely drew what he
saw; it is, however, a very decisive mark of distinction between a
serpent and a fish.
Seba records that he had received these Serpents from the Island of St
Domingo. This was at that time a flourishing French colony, and its
natural productions were far better known to Europe than they now are.
When I visited the neighbouring island of Jamaica in 1845-46, I heard
accounts of a wonderful animal occasionally seen in the eastern
districts of the island, which was reported as a Snake with a cock's
comb and wattles, and which crowed like a cock. A good deal of mystery
attached to this strange Serpent.
It was appropriated to a very remarkable and peculiar character of
scenery:--A wild mountain-region, formed of white limestone, abounding
in narrow glens, bounded by abrupt precipices, and permeated by
whispering streams that frequently pour in slender cascades over the
rocks. The limestone rock rises in abrupt terraces, wall above wall, and
its entire surface is most singularly honeycombed, "as if wrought by a
graving tool into rough diamond-points," alternating with smooth and
rounded holes of various sizes, from that of a hazel-nut upward. In many
of these hollows lie the small land-shells of the country, bleached
perfectly white, like the stone itself, of the genera _Helix_,
_Cyclostoma_, _Helicina_, _Cylindrella_, _Achatina_, &c., many of them
perfect, but many more in fragments. They exactly resemble fossil shells
_in situ_, but the species are absolutely identical with those that
crawl over the shrubs and trees in the same region. In very many cases
the dead shells accurately fit the hollows in the rock, whose interior
is impressed with the form and sculpturing of the shell in
_intaglio_:--a most curious and interesting fact, as it points to the
very recent formation of the region, the stone bearing evident tokens of
having been in a plastic condition when the shells were enveloped in it.
Out of the hollows of the rock, their roots fast grasping the
sharp-edged projections and tooth-like points of stone, and twining
through the tortuous cavities, and insinuating their fibrils into every
minute hollow where water may lodge, grow many tall trees of various
kinds, interlaced with climbers, and hung with festoons of _lianes_,
that resemble long and twisted cords, thrown from one to another, or
depending from the branches towards the ground. The noble Agave, or what
we in England call the American Aloe, here throws out its broad, fleshy,
spine-edged leaves, and lifts its tall flower-stalk loaded with the
candelabra-like branches of bloom; and numerous thick _Cacti_, some
erect and massive, others whip-like, long and trailing, give a peculiar
aspect to the vegetation. Great tufts of _Orchide{oe}_,--the lovely
_Broughtonia_, with its thick ovate leaves, and racemes of elegant
crimson flowers, the _Brasavola_, with long leaves resembling
porcupine-quills in form, and blossoms of virgin white, the _Oncidium_,
with its yellow and red flowers, like a score of painted butterflies
dancing in every breath, and many others,--crowd the forks or droop from
the twisted boughs of the trees.
This formation of honeycombed limestone is full of caverns, many of
which lead into one another in chains, and which have invested the
region with a sort of superstitious mystery. Runaway slaves and outlaws
have availed themselves of the facilities which its ravines and
inaccessible fastnesses afford, to defy capture; and during the
rebellion of the Maroons, it attained a considerable notoriety. There is
one estate about eight miles from Kingston, in the immediate vicinity of
which the famous hero, Three-fingered Jack, made his head-quarters. It
is a district of wild torrents and waterfalls of the most romantic
character; "the imagination of no painter of theatrical spectacles can
surpass the wild wonders of the mountain-hold of the _real_
Three-fingered Jack. Part of the road by which you ascend the falls is a
subterranean passage; and caverns are entered by simple crevices which
seem mere chinks in the irregular surface of the rock, all which natural
peculiarities account for the mysterious disappearances which the
mountain hero was enabled to enact from his pursuers."
It was at this spot I first heard reliable tidings of the strange
Crested Snake. A medical gentleman of reputation informed me that he had
seen, in 1829, a serpent of about four feet in length, but of unwonted
thickness, dull ochry in colour with well-defined dark spots, having on
its head a sort of pyramidal helmet, somewhat lobed at the summit, of a
pale red hue. The animal, however, was dead, and decomposition was
already setting in. He informed me that the negroes of the district were
well acquainted with it; and that they represented it as making a noise,
not unlike the crowing of a cock, and as being addicted to preying on
poultry.
Nor is it in Jamaica alone that the Crested Snake is known. In the
island of St Domingo, whence Seba received his curious specimens, my
friend Mr Hill heard reports of it. A Spanish gentleman whom he was
visiting in Hayti, told him that he had seen it, and begged him to note
it among the remarkable things of the country. It was in that far east
of the island, known as the ancient Caciquedom of Higuey, where the
Indians were of a more warlike disposition than their meek brethren of
the centre and west, and where the cruelties perpetrated upon them by
their Spanish invaders reached such a superhuman pitch of diabolism,
that even Las Casas says he almost feared to repeat them. The limestone
mountains are here of exactly the same description as those in Jamaica,
and the scenery assumes exactly the same romantic character. My friend's
Spanish informant had seen the serpent with mandibles like a bird, with
a cock's crest, with scarlet lobes or wattles; and he described its
habits,--perhaps rather from common fame than from personal
observation,--as a frequenter of hen-roosts, into which it would thrust
its head, and deceive the young chickens by its imitative physiognomy,
and by its attempts to crow, like their own Chanticleer. "Il canta como
un Gallo;" was the report in Hayti, just as in Jamaica.
I was much interested in this mysterious reptile, and mentioned in the
public papers my wish to possess a specimen. A gentleman of the
vicinity, Mr Jasper Cargill, was so desirous to oblige me that he
offered a sovereign for one; but though several persons were prompt to
promise the capture, no example was forthcoming.
After my return from Jamaica, the occurrence of two specimens found came
under the notice of my friend, but neither of them was preserved. Mr
Cargill had informed him that some years before, when visiting Skibo, in
St George's, an estate of his father's, in descending the mountain-road,
his attention was drawn to a snake of a dark hue, that erected itself
from amid some fragments of limestone-rock that lay about. It was about
_four feet long_, and unusually _thick-bodied_. His surprise was greatly
increased on perceiving that it was _crested_, and that from the side of
the cheeks depended some _red-coloured flaps_, like gills or wattles.
After gazing at him intently some time, with its head well erect, it
drew itself in, and disappeared among the fragmentary rocks.
The son of this gentleman met with another specimen under the following
circumstances, as detailed to me by my friend:--"It was, I think, on
Easter Eve, the 30th of March last, [1850,] that some youngsters of the
town came running to tell me of a curious snake, unlike any snake they
had ever seen before, which young Cargill had shot, when out for a day's
sport among the woodlands of a neighbouring penn. They described it as
in all respects a serpent, but with a very curious shaped head, and with
wattles on each side of its jaws. After taking it in hand and looking at
it, they placed it in a hollow tree, intending to return for it when
they should be coming home, but they had strolled from the place so far
that it was inconvenient to retrace their steps when wearied with
rambling; but they had lost no time in relating the adventure to me,
knowing it would interest me much, particularly as young Cargill's
father had thought it a snake similar to the one he had seen at Skibo,
in St George's, or to the crested serpent for a specimen of which, when
in St Thomas's in the East, he had offered the sum of twenty shillings.
The youth that shot the snake fell ill on the following morning with
fever, and could not go back to the woodlands to seek it, but he sent
his younger brother who had been with him; but although he thought he
rediscovered the tree in which his brother had placed it, he could not
find the snake. He conjectured that the rats had devoured it in the
night. When this adventure was related to me, another youth, Ulick
Ramsay, a godson of mine, who came with the young Cargills to tell me of
their discovery, informed me that not long previously, he had seen in
the hand of the barrack-master-serjeant at the barracks in Spanish Town,
a curious snake, which he, too, had shot among the rocks of a little
line of eminences near the railway, about two miles out, called
Craigallechie. It was a serpent with a curious shaped head, and
projections on each side, which he likened to the fins of an eel, but
said they were close up to the jaws. Here are, unquestionably, two of
the same snakes with those of Seba's Thesaurus, taken near Spanish Town,
and both about the honeycombed rocks that protrude through the plain of
St Catherine's in detached ridges and cones and hummocks, being points
of the greater lines of limestone, which have been covered by the
detritus of the plains, leaving masses of the under-rocks here and there
uncovered. These are the spots frequented, too, by the _Cyclura_; and
are continuations of our Red Hills--a country that so much resembles the
terraced cliffs and red-soil glens of Higuey.
It is remarkable that I have heard nothing more of this serpent of
renown, this true Basilisk, from that time till now; though I have no
doubt my Jamaica friends, who had become much interested in the matter,
would have communicated the specimen to me if any one had been obtained.
There is, however, sufficient evidence to assume the existence of such a
form in the greater Antilles, whether Seba's figures be identical with
it or not.
[141] _Op. cit._; vol. ii. pl. 40.
VII.
THE DOUBTFUL.
A very curious and unaccountable habit is attributed to some Reptiles,
which, though asserted by many witnesses, at different times and in
distant countries, has not yet received the general assent of men of
science. White of Selborne, in one of his charming letters to Pennant,
has the following note:--"Several intelligent folks assure me that they
have seen the Viper open her mouth and admit her helpless young down her
throat on sudden surprises, just as the female Opossum does her brood
into the pouch under her belly, upon the like emergencies. Yet the
London viper-catchers insist on it, to Mr Barrington, that no such thing
ever happens."[142]
The evidence of the London viper-catchers goes for no more than it is
worth; those whom Mr Barrington applied to,--how many and of what
experience I know not,--had not met with such a case. But negative
evidence is of little weight against positive. At the same time, others
of the same fraternity affirm the fact. There is, as Mr Martin observes,
no physiological reason against the possibility of the young maintaining
life for a brief period within the stomach of the parent. A swallowed
frog has been heard, by Mr Bell, to cry several minutes after it had
been swallowed by a snake; and the same excellent authority has seen
another frog leap out of the mouth of a snake which had swallowed it,
taking advantage of the fact that the latter gaped, as they frequently
do, immediately after taking food.
Mr Martin says he has conversed with several who had been assured by
gamekeepers and gardeners that the swallowing of the young by vipers had
been witnessed by them.[143] And Mr Blyth, a zoologist of established
reputation, observes,--"I have been informed of this by so many credible
eye-witnesses, that I cannot hesitate in yielding implicit credence to
the fact. One man particularly, on whose word I fully rely, tells me
that he has himself seen as many as thirteen young vipers thus enter the
mouth of the parent, which he afterwards killed and opened for the
purpose of counting them."[144]
Mr E. Percival, writing to the _Zoologist_, under date "64
Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, Oct. 17, 1848," narrates the following
facts:--"When in Scotland, last autumn, I saw what at the time satisfied
me that vipers really possessed this faculty, though the evidence was
scarcely as conclusive as might have been wished. Walking along a sunny
road, I saw a viper lying on the parapet. She had apparently just been
killed by a blow from a stick. Five or six young ones, about four inches
long, were wriggling about their murdered parent, and one was making its
way out of her mouth, at the time when I approached. Whether this was
the first time the young ones had seen the light, or whether they were
only leaving a place of temporary refuge, I leave to more experienced
observers than myself to determine."[145]
This communication brought out the following from the late Mr John
Wolley:--"Mr Percival's interesting note (_Zool._, 2305) on this subject
reminds me of a very similar anecdote, told me several years ago by a
gentleman who is an accurate observer, and who has had long experience
in all kinds of sports. He one day shot a viper, and almost immediately
afterwards it was surrounded by young ones, in what appeared to him the
most mysterious manner. But here the grand link was wanting which Mr
Percival has supplied,--the young ones were not seen to come out of
their mother's mouth. I may be allowed to mention an anecdote, told me
in 1842, by an illiterate shepherd of Hougham, near Dover: he met me
catching vipers, and, on my entering into conversation with him, he
volunteered--without any allusion of mine--to tell this curious story.
One day his father came suddenly upon a viper surrounded by her young,
she opened her mouth and they all ran down her throat; he killed her,
and leaving her on the ground, propped her mouth open between two pieces
of stick; presently the young ones crawled out: on the slightest alarm
they retreated back again,--and this they did repeatedly for several
days, during which time many people came to see it.[146] The young which
White of Selborne cut out of the old female, and which immediately
threw themselves into attitudes of defiance, had probably not then seen
the daylight for the first time. Mr Bell, in a note in Bennett's edition
of White's 'Selborne,' mentions the wide-spread belief in this alleged
habit of the viper; but appears to consider the fact not proved.
Accounts of similar habits in foreign viviparous snakes, common report,
and, above all, Mr Percival's observation, leave no doubt on my mind
about the matter."
The most recent case on record that I have met with, is the following,
communicated to the _Zoologist_[147] for last December, by the Rev.
Henry Bond, of South Petherton:--
"Walking in an orchard near Tyneham House, in Dorsetshire, I came upon
an old adder basking in the sun, with her young around her; she was
lying on some grass that had been long cut, and had become smooth and
bleached by exposure to the weather. Alarmed by my approach, I
distinctly saw the young ones run down their mother's throat. At that
time I had never heard of the controversy respecting the fact, otherwise
I should have been more anxious to have killed the adder, to prove the
case. As it was, she escaped while I was more interested in the
circumstance I witnessed than in her destruction."
Exactly the same thing is told of the North American Rattlesnake. Hunter
says, that when alarmed, the young ones, which are eight or ten in
number, retreat into the mouth of the parent, and reappear on its
giving a contractile muscular token that the danger is past.[148]
M. Palisot de Beauvois asserts that he saw a large rattlesnake which he
had disturbed in his walks immediately coil itself up and open its jaws,
when in an instant five small ones that were lying by it rushed into its
open mouth. He concealed himself, and watched the snake, and in a
quarter of an hour saw her discharge them. He then approached a second
time, when the young ones rushed into the parent's mouth more quickly
than before, and the animal immediately moved off, and escaped. The
phenomenon is said to have been observed in regard to some of the
venomous snakes of India, but I cannot now refer to details.
Confirmation of a reported fact is sometimes derived from collateral
evidence, and such is not wanting in the present case. The phenomenon is
not confined to serpents; it has been observed in their near relatives,
the lizards. Mr Edward Newman, while guarding the subject with a
philosophical caveat, furnishes his readers with the following highly
interesting and germane statement:--"1st, My late lamented friend,
William Christy, jun., found a fine specimen of the common scaly lizard
with two young ones. Taking an interest in everything relating to
Natural History, he put them into a small pocket vasculum to bring home;
but when he next opened the vasculum the young ones had disappeared, and
the belly of the parent was greatly distended; he concluded she had
devoured her own offspring; at night the vasculum was laid on a table,
and the lizard was therefore at rest: in the morning the young ones had
reappeared, and the mother was as lean as at first. 2d, Mr Henry
Doubleday, of Epping, supplies the following information:--A person
whose name is English, a good observer, and one, as it were, brought up
in Natural History, under Mr Doubleday's tuition, once happened to set
his foot on a lizard in the forest, and while the lizard was thus held
down by his foot, he distinctly saw three young ones run out of her
mouth. Struck by such a phenomenon, he killed and opened the old one,
and found two other young ones in her stomach, which had been injured
when he trod upon her. In both these instances the narrators are of that
class who do know what to observe, and how to observe it; and the facts,
whatever explanation they may admit, are not to be dismissed as the
result of imagination or mistaken observation."[149]
It is remarkable that all the serpents to which the phenomenon is
attributed are ovo-viviparous. Our common lizard, to which the facts
just narrated doubtless belong (_Zootoca vivipara_), has the same
property, which, however, appears to be by no means common among the
Saurian races. This coincidence, while it would afford a handle to the
deniers of the stated facts, in the assumption that the emergence of the
living young from the abdomen, or their presence within it, has given
rise to the notion--may have an essential significance and connexion
with the phenomenon itself, on the hypothesis of its truth. That
endowment, whatever it be, which enables the young to live and breathe
in the abdominal cavity of the mother before birth, may render it easier
for them than for others not so endowed to survive a temporary
incarceration within the stomach after birth. Mr Newman does not know
how to believe that a young and tender animal can remain in the strongly
digestive stomach of a viper and receive no injury; but he has forgotten
to take into the account the well-ascertained power that living tissues
have the power of resisting the action of chemical re-agents that would
instantly take effect upon them when dead. The walls of the stomach
itself are not corroded by the gastric-juice which is rapidly dissolving
the piece of meat within it. If the young animals can do without air for
a while in their snug retreat, I do not think they would need fear the
digestive operation. Air, I should suppose, _must_ be excluded from the
stomach, unless the parent have the power of swallowing air voluntarily,
for the emergency; but perhaps a cold-blooded animal like a reptile,
with a sluggish circulation and respiration, might do with very much
less fresh air than a mammal under similar conditions.
The proposed _rationale_ of those who reject these statements,--that
female vipers in the last stage of pregnancy have been opened, and have
given freedom to living and active young, and that careless and
unscientific observers have leaped to the conclusion that their young
must have entered by the mouth,--will not stand before the testimony
distinctly given by witnesses, who have actually seen the young retreat
into the mouth, and have then found them within the body. No doubt the
subject needs further investigation by careful and unprejudiced
naturalists; but the positive evidence already adduced on the testimony
of so many deponents, warrants our accepting the phenomenon as a normal
habit of certain species of Saurians and Ophidians, though it may be
somewhat rarely resorted to, and that whatever physical difficulties may
seem to stand in the way of its _a priori_ probability--difficulties
which perhaps depend on our ignorance, and which will disappear before
the light of advancing knowledge.
* * * * *
The entomologists have fallen most ungallantly foul of Madame Merian, a
lady who resided in Surinam nearly two hundred years ago, and devoted
her attention to the native entomology, painting insects in a very
admirable manner. She is set down as a thorough heretic, not at all to
be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an inventor of
false facts in science.