Part 22

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.

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."

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. 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."

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."

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. 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 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.

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."

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 à 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.

Among other things, she speaks of a large hemipterous fly, which has in consequence of her reports been named Fulgora lanternaria. This insect has the head produced into a large inflated proboscis more than an inch in length, which is said to carry an intense luminosity within its transparent walls, as a candle is carried within a lantern. The fair observer says that the first discovery which she made of this property caused her no small alarm. The Indians had brought her several of these insects, which by daylight exhibited no extraordinary appearance, and she enclosed them in a box until she should have an opportunity of drawing them, placing it upon a table in her lodging-room. In the middle of the night the confined insects made such a noise as to awake her, and she opened the box, the inside of which, to her great astonishment, appeared all in a blaze; and in her fright letting it fall, she was not less surprised to see each of the insects apparently on fire. She soon, however, divined the cause of this unexpected phenomenon, and re-enclosed her brilliant guests in their place of confinement. She adds that the light of one of these Fulgoræ is sufficiently bright to read a newspaper by: and though the tale of her having drawn one of these insects by its own light is without foundation, she doubtless might have done so if she had chosen.

This circumstantial and apparently truthful statement has brought no small odium on the fair narrator. Other naturalists who have had opportunities of seeing the insect in its native regions strongly deny its luminosity. The inhabitants of Cayenne, according to the French Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle, aver that it does not shine at all; and this is confirmed by M. Richard, a naturalist, who reared the species. The learned and accurate Count Hoffmansegg states that his insect collector Herr Sieber, a practised entomologist of thirty years' experience, who during a sojourn of several years in Brazil took many specimens of the Fulgora lanternaria, never saw a single one which was in the slightest degree luminous. There is a kindred species in China, F. candelaria, very common in those glazed boxes of insects which the Chinese sell to mariners; this also has been supposed to emit light, but Dr Cantor assures us that he has never observed the least luminosity in this species.

Thus it would seem that the obloquy which has fallen upon the ingenious lady is not altogether undeserved, and that for the sake of a telling story, she has been indeed "telling a story." But we may imagine her offended ghost looking round and saying, "All these gentlemen merely say they have not seen the light; now I say I have: is there no one who will verify my statement?"

M. Lacordaire,--an authority on South American insects second to none, says that he himself indeed never saw a luminous Fulgora all the time he was collecting in Brazil and Cayenne, and that most of the inhabitants of the latter country, when questioned on the subject, denied the fact, yet that others of the natives as distinctly affirmed that it is luminous. He asks whether it is not possible that the light may be confined to one sex, and thus the conflicting testimony be reconciled; and gives it as his opinion that the point is rather one which requires more careful observation, than one which we can consider absolutely decided.

Again, the Marquis Spinola, in an elaborate paper on this tribe, published in the Annals of the Entomological Society of France, strenuously contends that the remarkable development of the frontal portion of the head in the whole race is luminous. And finally, a friend of Mr Wesmael assured him that he had himself seen the American Fulgora luminous while alive.

It may help to sustain our faith in the veracity of Madame Merian, to know that there is some reason for attributing occasional luminosity to well-known English insects, of which hundreds, and even thousands, have been taken without manifesting a trace of the phenomenon. Mr Spence, in his interesting Letter on Luminous Insects, adduces the following evidence:--Insects "may be luminous which have not hitherto been suspected of being so. This seems proved by the following fact: A learned friend has informed me, that when he was curate of Ickleton, Cambridgeshire, in 1780, a farmer of that place, of the name of Simpringham, brought to him a mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris, Latr.), and told him that one of his people seeing a Jack-o'-lantern, pursued it, and knocked it down, when it proved to be this insect, and the identical specimen shewn to him.

"This singular fact, while it renders it probable that some insects are luminous which no one has imagined to be so, seems to afford a clue to the, at least, partial explanation of the very obscure subject of ignes fatui, and to shew that there is considerable ground for the opinion long ago maintained by Ray and Willughby, that the majority of these supposed meteors are no other than luminous insects. That the large varying lambent flames mentioned by Beccaria to be very common in some parts of Italy, and the luminous globes seen by Dr Shaw cannot be thus explained, is obvious. These were probably electrical phenomena; certainly not explosions of phosphuretted hydrogen, as has been suggested by some, which must necessarily have been momentary. But that the ignis fatuus mentioned by Derham as having been seen by himself, and which he describes as flitting about a thistle, was, though he seems of a different opinion, no other than some luminous insect, I have little doubt. Mr Sheppard informs me that, travelling one night between Stamford and Grantham on the top of the stage, he observed for more than ten minutes a very large ignis fatuus in the low marshy grounds, which had every appearance of being an insect. The wind was very high: consequently, had it been a vapour it must have been carried forward in a direct line; but this was not the case. It had the same motion as a Tipula, flying upwards and downwards, backwards and forwards, sometimes appearing as settled, and sometimes as hovering in the air. Whatever be the true nature of these meteors, of which so much is said and so little known, it is singular how few modern instances of their having been observed are on record. Dr Darwin declares, that though in the course of a long life he had been out in the night, and in the places where they are said to appear, times without number, he had never seen anything of the kind; and from the silence of other philosophers of our own times, it should seem that their experience is similar."