PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON SNAKES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 942, 7 May 1880, Page 3

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON SNAKES.

Professor Huxley recently, in London, lectured on the above subject. He said ; There were m the popular apprehension, few animals more symbolical of degradation and horror. Quoting the primeval curse in Genesis, he remarked that no creatures seemed more easily destroyed by man, and few less able to defend themselves. Few wounds would be loss harmful than Hie snake’s bite were it nothing more than the sudden closing of the teeth. Yet there were not many animals gifted with so many faculties. It can stand up erect, climb as well as an ape, swim like a lish, dart forward, and do all hut fly in seizing its prey. The destructiveness of snakes to man was illustrated by the fact that 20,000 human lives are yearly lost in India by their poison, and it might safely ho said that they are a more deadly enemy to our race than any other beasts of the field. Ho spoke first of the throe classes indigenous to the English climate—the ringed snake, the coronella, and the viper. Of these the viper alone was venomous, which the difference between its structure and that of the harmless British snakes helped to cx-

plain. It might bo'that the reason there ! were no snakes in Ireland was the multi- j plicity’ of Its other plagues. Everybody | must be struck with the beauty of the ( harmless snakes, which form the overwhelming majority—especially the grace with which they wreathed their bodies into circles, and their fine eyes. The venomous snakes are nut so beautiful. None admired oupyiative viper, with its yellowish scales. To adults its bite was far seldomer serious than to the young. Passing to snakes in general, of which there were many hundreds.of distinct species, the lecturer Illustrated,in great detail the adaptation of their organisation to its manifold work. Very graphic was his description of the manner in which some of the more destructive snakes dart suddenly round on their prey, twisting themselves round its body, crushing it into a shapeless and writhing.mass, at last swallowing it whole, Ho pointed out some very curious arrangements in the anatomical mechanism am l jaw-bones illustrative of the statement that the snake cannot properly be said to swallow his pre-y ; he holds on to it rather, gradually .working it down its throat in a most leisurly manner, but never letting it go. He would take a sleep for (i weeks before giving up bis task, and if the morsel was really too big would sometimes die in the effort to get it down. Of course the snake required a very fully developed and effective apparatus of salivry glands for this purpose. The poison bag of the venomous snakes was nothing but a modification of the salivry glands of harmless species, the structure of both kinds being in almost all respects not miy parallel throughout, but almost identical. As another instance of the close relationship, it was shown that the sharp cbanilcl-ueedle which conveys the unison Jof the cobia and its congeners is no’hing but the development of the teeth which these murderous reptiles pos. sess in common with inocuous snakes. The fact that !ho salivary gland was the poison laboratory of the deadly snakes, as well as the known properties of the saliva of dogs or other living creatures {affected with rabies, appeared to Professor Huxley to point out the direction in which the solution of the difficult problem of the cause of snakepoisoning and of a possible antidote against it. At present there was no man living who could heal the bite of the cobra, except by cauterization in very fresh eases.