THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE.

PART I.—WHAT IT IS NOT.

GOSSIP from the Zoological Gardens to confirm what has been so often said, namely, that nine out of every ten of the visitors to the Ophidarium will point to the tongue of a snake and exclaim, ‘Look at its sting!’ seems too trivial and too defiantly challenging the credulity of my readers, to introduce here. Nevertheless, that it is necessary emphatically to state not only that the tongue of a snake is not its sting, but that a snake has no sting at all, you will admit the very next time you go there. You will hear not only the Monday, but the Sunday visitors—well dressed, and apparently well educated persons—say to each other when watching a snake, ‘That’s its sting!’ I must be permitted, therefore, to ‘gossip’ a moment in confirmation.

One Friday, in April 1881, just before the time when the public were excluded at feeding hours, we were watching the movements of a pretty little harmless snake, the rapid quivering of whose tongue denoted excitement of some kind. Probably it was anticipating the frog in store for it, as this was feeding day. Its tongue was unusually active, and was exserted to its extreme length, its motions being almost invisible in their rapidity.

Two gentlemen drew near, and also stopped before this cage. One of them, a tall, dark man, looked like a foreigner; but he was talking pure English to his friend, and had been talking a good deal about the snakes, as if he were familiar with their habits. ‘From the Tropics,’ observed my companion, sotto voce, and looking as if we might hear something worth knowing from this large, loud-voiced visitor.

‘See that?’ he presently exclaimed to his friend. ‘Look there!’

‘That thing it keeps putting out of its mouth?’

‘Yes. That’s its sting. One touch of that, just one little touch, and you’re a dead man. There’s no cure for it!’

No less than four different parties made similar remarks in our hearing during our short visit to the reptile house that day, and these not of the common crowd either.

First, two lads who looked as if they ought to have known better. Next, a party of several persons, of whom the one more particularly addressed when his friend informed him, ‘That’s the sting that it jerks out so,’ replied, ‘Ah, but they extract it!’ Thirdly, a young gentleman remarked to his lady companion, ‘See how it keeps darting out its sting!’ to whom she ejaculated, ‘Oh, the fearful creature!’ Fourthly, the tall man. And all this of poor little innocent Tropidonotus (our common ring snake), with not even a fang to injure you!

Like many other of the zoological myths not yet extinct, this ‘stinging tongue’ has its origin in mystery. Long before a deadly serpent was examined by an intelligent reasoner, and the nature of its fatal stroke comprehended, the mysterious ‘dart’ was seen to play; this, to the ignorant, being the only visible and possible instrument of such fatality. But that the fable should still obtain is amazing. Even some learned men of the present century, if they do not happen to have included natural history in their studies, assist in disseminating the error. Can they, however, be acquainted with classical writers? Pliny, to whom many of the old-time errors in natural history have been traced, must be acquitted as regards the poisonous tongue; for though he speaks of the ‘sting’ of a serpent, I do not recall that he once attributed the injury to the tongue. Aristotle, whose reputation as a naturalist ranks far higher, distinctly and frequently speaks of the bite, and the degrees of injury inflicted by the various kinds of serpent bites. It is possible that some classical writers may have supposed the tongue to be an instrument of death, as it is certain that some of the sacred writers did. But our inherited faith in Bible history has, until recently, checked all doubt and even inquiry. Now, however, that a new version of Holy Writ has been deemed essential, it is to be hoped that an efficient naturalist is included in the Council.

In justification of the above criticism I may be permitted to quote just one of the many unquestioning writers. The author of the History of Egypt, W. Holt Yates, M.R.C.P. of London, President of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, Physician to the General Dispensary, etc., says in a footnote (vol. i. p. 322), ‘It is a mistake to suppose that snakes hurt only with their teeth. Some have no teeth, but only hard gums. Others only attack with their tongue—the same end is attained in either case by the insertion of the poison.’

Now were you to ask that writer, as I have several times asked persons who were under the same impression, ‘What reason have you to suppose that the snake’s tongue is poisonous?’ he would very likely reply, ‘Oh! well—it is venomous. I always thought so.’ Then, reflectively, he might add, ‘Poisonous-tongued?—“whose tongue outvenoms”—“with deadlier tongue than thine, thou serpent”’—or some such familiar words, proving that his idea was poetical, imaginative, and acquired he can scarcely explain how.

What very little he knew about snakes, then, was learned from Shakspeare—we say Shakspeare, for what other author has been read and re-read, and committed to memory, and quoted during the last three centuries like the Bard of Avon? The bard, genius though he was, and wide his field of information, was certainly not a naturalist. Nor did he make any pretensions to be one. He was as unconscious of the errors in natural history which he was handing down to posterity, as he was unconscious of his own enduring fame; or that he would be ‘the immortal bard’ three hundred years later, with every probability of ever living in the human mind as such.

His idea of the poisonous tongue of a snake was the prevalent one of his day. It was an inherited prejudice, which he had never stopped to question, any more than nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of his readers have ever stopped to question the fact of an adder’s tongue being poisonous, Shakspeare having affirmed that it is so.

People do not read Shakspeare to learn natural history, you say. True; but his poetry, his similes, take hold of the mind, fix themselves in the memory, and take root; and an assertion, as in the case of the gentle little ‘blindworm,’ takes very deep root, as it seems, and thrives for three hundred years; or naturalists of the present day would not feel called upon to explain that it is neither ‘blind,’ nor ‘deaf,’ nor ‘venomous.’

Still you reject the idea that Shakspeare through his immense and universal popularity is responsible for a ridiculous error. Not Shakspeare alone, then, or culpably so. But since the idea has prevailed for thousands of years, even to the present time, and since persons are more likely to quote Shakspeare on the subject than any other author, let us glance at the literature of Shakspeare’s time, and endeavour to account for his fixed impression as to a serpent’s tongue being poisonous. Let us also try to recall from any one of the writers of the same era, or those who wrote in English previously, any single line on the present subject that has become so engrafted on the mind, so incorporated with our education, as those, for example, above quoted. There was a host of other play-writers in Shakspeare’s time, but very few naturalists.

Poetry, plays, and Protestantism characterized the literature of the period. But familiar to us by name as are his contemporaries, it will be as easy to find one educated person who has read the whole of their works, as it would be to find one educated person who has not read Shakspeare.

There were travels and histories written, the great maritime discoveries of the age giving birth to this new class of literature. Hakluyt’s voyages were printed when Shakspeare was only twenty-five years of age, and even if he read them he would not have learned much about serpents there. Nor in Sir Walter Raleigh’s histories either, which were written chiefly during his prison life, he being liberated the same year that saw the death of Shakspeare, 1616.

Many other well-known authors will occur to the reader, to say nothing of the writers of the previous eras, the great divines and scholars who wrote in Latin, and the many English ballad-writers more likely to be perused by ‘the Bard.’

As for natural history, it found no place on those shelves, for as a science it did not as yet exist in England. Lord Bacon, Shakspeare’s celebrated contemporary, did make some pretensions to be a naturalist; but his Novum Organum was written in Latin, and we are not led to believe that the poet enjoyed any very great educational and classical advantages, having had

‘Small Latin and less Greek,’

according to his friend and eulogist, Ben Jonson.

And even if Shakspeare did read what was then the Book of the period, Lord Bacon unfortunately fell into some of the popular errors, or made very hazardous conjectures, so far as natural history was understood; and of him Dr. Carpenter says, ‘So far from contributing to our knowledge of natural history, he often gave additional force to error by the weight of his authority.’

In recalling some lines from Shakspeare, the reader will find how very familiar to the mind are the serpent similes. Some of them prove that the poet was cognizant of a tooth being also a source of evil; but it is evident that he thought the tongue was so also, especially the tongue of the ‘blindworm.’

For a few out of the many in which Shakspeare’s plays abound, vide Timon of Athens, Act iv. Scene 3: ‘The gilded newt and eyeless venomed worm.’

Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act iii. Scene 2. When Hermia thinks that Demetrius has killed Lysander while sleeping, she scathingly ejaculates: ‘O brave touch! Could not a worm, an adder do so much? An adder did it; for with deadlier tongue than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung!’

In Cymbeline, Act iii. Scene 2, Pisanio says: ‘What false Italian, as poisonous tongued as handed, hath prevailed on thy too ready hearing?’ Again, in Scene 4 of the same Act, Pisanio would not hear evil of his mistress, and cries: ‘No, ‘tis slander; whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue outvenoms all the worms.’

Henry VI., Act ii. Scene 2, Clifford says to the King: ‘Who ‘scapes the lurking serpent’s mortal sting!’ Act iii. Scene 2: ‘Their touch affrights me as a serpent’s sting.... What! art thou like the adder waxen deaf? Be poisonous too!’

Much Ado about Nothing, Act v. Scene 1, Antonio says: ‘As I dare take a serpent by the tongue.’

And in King John, Act ii. Scene 1, Randolph says to King Philip, ‘France, thou may’st hold a serpent by the tongue!’

Not snakes only, but toads, lizards, spiders, and other ‘creeping things,’ were thought venomous in Shakspeare’s time.

Song in Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘You spotted snakes, with double tongue.’ Then, in appeal to the ‘serpents’ not to injure the Fairy Queen: ‘Newts and blindworms, do no wrong.’

The nearest approach to a scientific work on natural history written in English at that time was a curious volume published in 1608, in whose folio pages may be seen most astonishing ‘Serpentes,’ combinations of worms and feathered fowls, saurian, ophidian, and batrachian, wonderfully adorned with horns, gills, wings, spear-shaped or forked tongues, and arrow-shaped tails. The zoological illustrations of that work give us some idea of what a snake was supposed to be. Among them is one with a human head, and another with a crown, because he is ‘the King of Serpentes for his Magnitude or Greatnesse.’ There is also a ‘Dragon’ with horns, wings, scales, claws, two rows of robust teeth, and an arrow-headed tongue. Mingled fable and fancy with some few facts, these anomalies are solemnly described as ‘The Naturall Historie of Serpentes,’ the said serpents including bees, wasps, ‘frogges,’ toads, earthworms, lizards, spiders, etc., and a ‘cockatrice.’

The author, E. Topsell, addresses the ‘gentle and pious Reader’ on the ‘publishing of this Treatise of Venomous Beasts,’ and more particularly of ‘Serpentes, Divine, Morall, and Naturell, their Poyson and Bitings, since the gentle and pious Reader will see how that the Historie of Serpentes begineth at the Creation.’

Thus we see that the ideal snake was a religious principle, carried out in illustrations and architectural embellishments, where ‘that old serpent the devil’ was depicted as a creature as terrible as imagination could conceive it; and of course with a highly-developed tongue in the form of a dart or a spear, more or less alarming.

Far in advance of Topsell, and far in advance of England, were the naturalists of Southern Europe. Gesner, professor of philosophy at Zurich, published his Historia Animalium in 1551; and Aldrovanus, professor of philosophy and physic at Bologna, wrote thirteen folio volumes of natural history, four only of which were published during his lifetime, and the rest after his death, which was in 1605. These two authors, though out of date at the present day, have left their names perpetuated in plants and animals examined by them.

As one of the objects of this work is to trace the origin of some of the many errors that have obtained regarding the serpent race, and to note the gradual enlightenment observable in successive writers, it is a part of our duty to quote the Bible; and this we do with reverence, emboldened by the fact that the present state of knowledge has demanded a new translation to satisfy the intellect of the age.

Shakspeare himself might have had the Bible devoutly in his mind when he talked of the adder’s ‘sting.’

Among the many commentators and exponents of Holy Writ, Cruden (A.D. 1794) says, ‘Some place the venom of the serpent in its gall, others in its tongue, and others in its teeth.’ David seems to place it in its tongue:—Ps. cxl. 3, ‘They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent.’ So also Job, xx. 16, ‘The viper’s tongue shall slay him.’

The sacred writers, however, quite understood that serpents did bite as well as ‘sting.’ Solomon made the same distinction that is observable in Shakspeare, ‘biteth like a serpent, stingeth like an adder.’

In fact, the tongue of an adder, whether in allusion to ‘the worm of the Nile,’ or to our own pretty little ‘deaf-adder,’ seems still to bear the evil character which it has borne from time immemorial.

Superstition, prejudice, and ignorance are still rampant whenever a snake is thought of. Inherited and educated antipathies regarding them are still so strong that some persons will not even allow themselves to unlearn their misconceptions; others by misrepresentations do their best to prevent a true comprehension of their habits from being better understood; and, again, there are those who know better, and who are even engaged in instructing others by their pen, but who fall into the habit of encouraging horror and hatred, instead of reason, truth, and a tolerance towards a creature wisely produced to fulfil its part and to perform its duties in the great balance of organized beings.

Some journalists religiously keep up the delusion about the tongue of a snake, by using a prejudicial prefix. From a pile of newspaper cuttings and other printed matter relative to snakes, I transcribe a few sentences at random, to illustrate what is meant:—‘Its horrid forked tongue.’ ‘Its slithering tongue.’ ‘Its villanous poisonous tongue,’ etc. And if sensationalism seem to demand still more forcible language, as, for instance, in describing an injury or an escape, our journalist tells us of the ‘forked tongue darting defiance.’ ‘The wicked-looking serpent tongue protruded with lightning-like swiftness.’ ‘To see the reptile run its devilish tongue out at you.’ ‘Its horrid lancinating tongue protruded,’ etc. These are only a few of such sentences copied verbatim, but they are unfortunately too common, even with the better-informed writers.

The idea of a snake being sufficiently intelligent, reasoning, and reflective to deliberately ‘run its tongue out at you,’ as if conscious of its own moral power and your moral weakness, is too ludicrous. If the snake could truly inflict injury with those soft, flexible, delicate filaments,—if it could, with one rapid touch, insert poison, as the tall talker at the Zoological Gardens affirmed, the threatening quiver could only be in friendly warning. Let the poor reptile at least be thanked for that.

Our lamented friend, Frank Buckland, fell into the same error (or inadvertency, since he quite understood that the tongue could do no harm) when he wrote thus of the tongue in his Curiosities of Natural History:—‘The tongue is generally protruded in order to intimidate the bystanders;’ and, ‘The tongue acts as a sort of intimidation to its aggressors;’ thus giving the snake the credit of a waggish sort of intelligence, far more complimentary to the reptile than to the bystander. In imagination we behold a solemn Convention of snakes, held in ages long ago, and a resolution to this effect passed unanimously:—‘Now these poor ignorant mortals think we can kill them with our soft and tender tongues. Though so tall, and powerful, and terrible to us, they look dreadfully frightened whenever we use our tongues in our own service. Therefore, whenever any of these two-legged creatures come near us, we will put out our tongues at them, and frighten them off,’—a resolution which has answered admirably well down to the present time. ‘Down to the present time’ is written and repeated in all seriousness.

Let me be pardoned for introducing a little more gossip here, as it is the fashion to relate what is seen and heard at the Zoological Gardens. And so much is related, and has been related, and even printed, to mislead the public, that, in the earnest hope and aspiration of assisting in correcting false impressions, I claim to repeat what was heard as well as the rest. Besides, when persons talk as loudly as if they were delivering a lecture, and apparently with the benevolent intention of instructing the public generally, one feels justified in quoting them.

Eight years ago, when first contemplating this work, and anxiously seeking to ascertain precisely what could be learned, and what was already understood about snakes, so far as the reptile house at the Zoological Gardens was a means of instruction, I made very careful notes of what I saw there, and occasionally of what I heard there.

In the summer of 1874 some well-dressed children, accompanied by their parents, were watching the pythons in the largest cage, when one of the little ones asked, ‘Papa, what is that thing that the snake keeps putting out of its mouth?’ ‘Oh, that is its poisonous sting,’ replied the father. The eldest girl (in her teens), with an affected shudder, cried ‘Ugh!’ and a boy exclaimed, ‘I am glad it can’t put it through the glass at us!’

August 3, 1877.—A gentleman, to all appearance well-bred and intelligent, told his two boys, ‘That’s the sting,’ as they were watching the play of a snake’s tongue in one of the cages. The boys looked wonderingly at the terrible instrument, and were evidently anxious to know more about it, and turned to ask their father. But he had passed on, and was then calling to them to look at something else.

July 1880.—A lady, apparently the governess of two girls of about twelve and fourteen, and of a boy of about eight, who were with her, was conscientiously endeavouring to blend instruction with amusement, and was telling them some strange and hitherto unheard-of facts about the snakes; as, for instance, that the rattlesnake was now going to ‘crush a guinea-pig by winding itself round it;’ for it was feeding-day, and the keeper had just put poor piggy into the cage. But the children got tired of waiting to see what did not occur; the rattlesnake was merely investigating matters by means of its useful tongue. ‘Now, watch it!’ cried the lady eagerly, ‘and you’ll see it lick the guinea-pig with its poisonous tongue.’

Neither was this feat performed by the Crotalus, and as the children got tired of waiting, and were impatient to ‘see something else,’ the party moved on.

But the reader will be weary of hearing what the tongue of a snake is not, and be desirous of knowing what it is; and to this purpose we will devote another chapter.