PROF. H' XL'YON SNAKES.

Inangahua Times, Issue II, 18 February 1880, Page 2

PROF. H ' XL 'YON SNAKES.

+ On December M the opening li'Cfute >f the London Insiiiii'ion for the season was de'kered by Professor Huxley, to a very crowded audience, hi« surfjeet being " Snake,*," than wliich, he said, th<?re were in she popular apprehension, lew Hiiimals m ire symbolical of degradation and horror. Q<ioting the primeval curse in Genesis, hp remarked that no creature seemed more easily destroyed by man and few less able to defend themselves bVw wounds would be less harmful than * snake's bite were it nothing more that* the sudden closing of the teeth. Ye! there were not very many animals gifted with so many faculties. It can stan^ ap erect. cHtnb as well as any ape, swim like a fish, dart forward, and do all but fly in teiz'<ng its prey. Ibe desrruetiveness of snakes to man was illustrated by the fact that 20,000 human lives are yearly lost in India by their poison, and it mig'it safely be Raid that they are a mop deadly enemy to our nice than oiher beasts of the field. Professor ffux'e> «poke first of the three classes indigenous to our own clim-ite— the ringed snsii>e. the coronelia. and »he «iper. Of these the viper alone was venomous, which the difference between its structure and th-»t of the harmless British snakes helped to ex lain. It might be that tbje re-son iltere were no snakes in Ireland was the multiplicity of i>s other plagues. Every* body rau-Jt be struck with the beauty of the harmless snakes, which formed tlie overwhelming majority — especially the grace wi h which they wreathed their bodies into circles and their fine eyes The ven^mons snakes were not so beautiful. None ad'nired our native viper, with its yellowish scales. To adulls i's bile was far seldomer serious than to the voting. Passing to snakes in general, of which there were many hundreds of dis i met species, the lecturer illistra'pd in great detail the adaptation of »h«*ir organisation to its manifold work. TTVry arajh'c was bis description of the manner in which some o* the more destructive snakes dart suddenly on their pre?. rwisMng themselves round its body, crushing it into a shapeless and writhing mass, and at last swallowing it who'e. He pointed out some very curious arrant merits in the anatomical mechanism and ] jiw bones illustrative of the statement i hat ihe snake cannot properly be said to swailow his prey ; he holds on to it j rather, gradunlly working it down its throat in a n.ost leisurely manner, bu' never letting it co. He would take a sleep for sis weeks before giving up hitask, and if the morsel were really too !>ig would sometimes die in the effort to 'jet i? d wn. Of c.mrse, t!ie snalte re quired a lull}' d<-relope<] and effective apparatus of salivtiry ghnds for this purprwe. Tlie prison img of the venomous snake was nothing but a modifica ion of ihe snbvary glands of the hnrmit>sv s-ecies, tlte strui'tiire of both kinas being in almost ail respects not only parallel ffirou about, but almost identical. As another instance of the close relationship it was show" that the sharp channel* needle which conveys the poison of tbe co ra and its congeners is nothing but the development of the moth' which ihe c rnarderous an! vicious rep'iles poss- ss in common with innocuous snakes. Ihe fact that fie salivary g'and was the piispn laboratory 'of the deadly snakes us well as the known properties of the si ivM of dogs or other living creatures affected wjih ri hies appeared to Professor Hurley to point nit the direction in which the solution of tht» difficol 1 i ro lem of the eiuse of «n^ke«poisouins; Httd ot a possible antidote auninst it. A» pie-en! theie was no man lining wi>o eoulrlj*hf>!il the bite of the cobra, except cautenza'ion in rerv fre^h c-<«hs.