THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE.

PART II.—WHAT IT IS.

IF only by the law of compensation, another chapter must be devoted to the innocent tongue of a snake. It has been an object of hatred and aversion for untold ages, and the misrepresentation of it, and the abuse of it, would fill many chapters. Were it endowed with speech, and the words of St. James applied to it,—‘the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity,’—no stronger animosity could be displayed.

Happily, this animosity is by degrees dying away; but only by degrees, as we have seen, some writers during the last twenty years having been undergoing a sort of transition state with regard to the use of the tongue, inasmuch as, while they have arrived at the conviction that it does not ‘sting,’ they are not yet quite clear as to what it does do. Some few have even clung to the lubrication theory. Popular writers, to speak more correctly, not scientific ones. Still, it is the popular writers who most influence the casual reader. To satisfy a passing interest, we turn to these, to the books they quote, and next to encyclopedias, and not to scientific text-books, where we are beset by technicalities which are in themselves a study to be first mastered. Otherwise, from scientific works a good deal might have been learned long ago about this exceedingly wonderful organ, the tongue of a snake.

It is evident, however, that a good many of our drawing-room naturalists have not thought it necessary to first devote themselves to the scientific study of a snake’s tongue before they ventured to write about it; therefore they remained only partially enlightened. To such an extent has the supposed ‘lubrication’ prevailed, that ophiologists of the day have not thought it too trivial to speak of and to refute. The same visitors to the Zoological Gardens who tell their friends or children to look at the snake’s ‘sting,’ also wait to ‘see the snake lick the rabbit all over before it begins to swallow it.’

Were a painter to set to work to paint a house, or a mason to whitewash the ceiling, with a camel’s-hair pencil, it would not be a more tedious and impossible process than that of a snake ‘licking all over with its tongue’ the body of the animal it is about to devour. Illustrations, in order to be as startling as possible, and to feed the educated horror of snakes, often represent a boa or an anaconda coiled round a bull or some other equally large and rough-coated animal, which, as the writer informs us, ‘it was seen to lick all over and cover with its mucus.’

Let the reader reflect a moment, and he will perceive what supply of moisture this degree of lubrication would demand. Even were the snake’s whole body furnished with salivary glands, and were it provided with a broad, flat tongue to work with, what must the rate of secretion be to enable the snake to go through such a task, and to enable it to perform it in a period of time in which a spectator (supposing he had sufficient powers of endurance) could stand by and watch the process!

Snakes are, it is true, supplied very abundantly with a mucous saliva. Describing the mode of swallowing, Dr. GÜnther says: ‘But for the quantity of saliva discharged over the body of the prey, deglutition would be slow.’ Slow in comparison with the feeding of other animals it is, under any circumstances, and it would be painfully tedious, almost impossible, for the unfortunate reptile to feed at all, were its difficulties not relieved by this ‘abundant supply’ of saliva. But this is not saying that the tongue performs any office in systematic lubrication. It simply means that the mouth of the hungry snake ‘waters’ over its food, and waters far more freely than is the usual case with other animals. We ourselves know something of this stimulation of the salivary glands at the sight or smell of food when we are hungry; but snakes are beneficently provided with the salivary apparatus (described in the first chapter), and the mouth waters over its prey, as much when the tongue is in its sheath as when the tongue is engaged in its own peculiar and distinct functions. What the spectator does see is this tongue fulfilling its office of feeling, examining, exploring, investigating, ascertaining whether the prey is thoroughly dead, and the best way of setting to work on the great task of swallowing the huge, rough mass. All this work the tongue does for its owner; and we shall, as I hope, see before we have done with it, that so far from exciting our hatred and disgust, there is perhaps no other feature or organ belonging to the helpless snake so important to it, so worthy of our own observation and admiration, as this much-abused tongue.

We have an admirable opportunity for study in our visits to the Zoological Gardens, and there the lover of nature can decide for himself. Hours and hours has one watched, and I admit (in the early days of my studies) waited, to see this lubrication which, as the books told me, was performed by the tongue. Often and often one has heard visitors say to each other when they have seen the prey about to be devoured, ‘Now we shall see, or you will see’ (as the case might be) ‘the snake lick it all over before he swallows it.’

An observation to this effect was once made in our hearing while I was on the point of asking the keeper if he had ever observed anything of the kind, and was telling him how often it had been so stated in print.

‘Snakes never did, and never will, lick their prey, ma’am,’ returned Holland emphatically; ‘but I have seen the saliva flow, it is so plentiful.’ And so have I, and so may you, patient reader, if you are sufficiently interested in the subject. You will soon become convinced that such a process as ‘licking’ is impossible, and you will soon decide that if the reptile did this instinctively, its tongue would have developed into something more like that of a cat, strong and rough with tiny spines, or some organ better adapted to the performance than a thin pencil or fork of tender flesh.

It is much to be regretted that a number of anecdotes which describe this ‘lubrication’ have been retained and quoted over and over again in books on snakes. Writers who are conscientiously instructing us, and who are even telling us ‘snakes do not lick their prey,’ quote the anecdotes which tell us that they do, and thus appear to favour the assumed mistake.

Space will not permit of the numerous examples which might be here introduced in proof of this. Nor is it necessary to name more than two or three of these misleading anecdotes; the reader will at once recognise them, for they appear everywhere.

First comes the M’Leod narrative, which has found favour with popular writers for no less than sixty-three years! The first edition of the Voyage of the Alceste, by Dr. M’Leod, the surgeon on board, was published in London in 1817, a second edition in 1818, and a third (so popular was the work) in 1819. His account of feeding the boa constrictor was not the least popular part of the little book; for in those days there were few who knew what to believe where a snake was concerned. The account of a goat being swallowed fills several pages, written in a style to exaggerate horrors, and apparently deny to the reptile any right to obey nature’s laws. ‘The python fixed a deadly and malignant eye on the goat:’ ... ‘first operation was to dart out its forked tongue:’ ... ‘continued to grasp with its fangs:’ ... ‘began to prepare for swallowing:’ and ‘commenced by lubricating with its saliva:’ ... ‘commission of this murder,’ etc.

Maunder, in his Treasury of Natural History, quotes this, having previously stated (under the head Boa Constrictor): ‘The prey is then prepared for being swallowed, which the creature accomplished by pushing the limbs into the most convenient position, and then covering the surface with a glutinous saliva.’ Though not positively asserted that the tongue is the agent in this ‘covering,’ the reader naturally jumps to this conclusion. The ‘Penny’ and several other encyclopedias quote the M’Leod story, among them the Encyclopedia Britannica, ed. 1856, notwithstanding the compiler of the article ‘Reptilia’ affirms, ‘The use of the tongue is not exactly known.’ Surely this licking over an enormous mass of fur or wool, each time the reptile partakes of food, would be a very important use indeed of the tongue, did such a process take place.

Mr. Philip Henry Gosse, in his Natural History of Reptiles, 1860, repeats the M’Leod story but he follows it up by also quoting a writer, Broderip, who carefully considered the subject, and who doubted the possibility of such a tongue performing this office.

Mr. Gosse is one of the most popular of our ‘drawing-room’ naturalists. A careful and conscientious writer, he has contributed in his various works a great deal of valuable information, and has done as much, if not more, towards inducing a taste for natural history than any other author of his day and class.

Another popular anecdote much used is that of Sir R. Ker Porter, who (cir. 1820-24) sent an anaconda to the United Service Museum, accompanied by an account of its seizing its prey. ‘In an instant every bone is broken, and the long, fleshy tongue passes over the entire form of the lifeless beast, leaving on it a sort of glutinous saliva which greatly facilitates deglutition.’ This last clause was particularly striking, and you find those three words, ‘greatly facilitates deglutition,’ used ever since by more writers than one can enumerate.

A third of the many well-worn anecdotes in which the ‘lubrication’ is conspicuous, is taken from a German journal, the Ephemerides, in which a combat between a boa constrictor and a buffalo is described in the approved sensational style, and this sentence occurs:—‘In order to make the body slip down the throat more glibly, it (the snake) was seen to lick the whole body over, and thus cover it with its mucus.’

Perhaps these three anecdotes, copied from book to book for, say, only fifty years, have done as much to mislead regarding the second reputed use of the tongue, as Shakspeare and his predecessors did regarding the stinging theory.

Sir Robert Ker Porter published two very handsome quarto volumes (illustrated) of his Travels in Georgia, Persia, and the East, during the years 1817 to 1821. Such a work from a distinguished traveller in that day would soon grow into popularity; but, like Dr. M’Leod, he does not describe his snake by the cool light of science.

In a very able article, ‘Boa’ in the good old Penny Cyclopedia, dated 1835, the writer, quoted by Mr. Philip Henry Gosse, mildly criticises the lubrication theory, and gives at length an excellent paper on the subject, contributed to the Zoological Journal in 1826 by the distinguished naturalist, W. J. Broderip, F.L.S., etc.[32] Very courteously Mr. Broderip discusses Dr. McLeod’s description, and in giving an account of what he himself witnessed in the manner of a boa feeding, speaks of ‘the secretion of lubricating mucus being excessive,’ and that ‘the jaws dripped with the mucus which had lubricated the parts,’ but not once mentioning the tongue as having any part in this function. The writer in the Penny Cyclopedia concludes by saying that he had himself frequently watched the snakes while feeding, and they ‘never covered the victim; the tongue was thrust forth, but only,’ etc. And yet so many book-makers who must have read this have copied the anecdotes without the comment, and have thus popularized the lingual lubrication!