Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1879-12-13 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON SNAKES.  -- - The opening lecture at the London Institution for the season was delivered by Professor Huxley, F.A.S., to a very crowded nudience, his subject being" Snakes," than which, he said, there were, in 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 less harmful than a 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 any ape, swim like a fish, dart forward, and do all but fly in seizing its prey. The destructiveness of makes to man was illustrated by the fact that 20,000 human lives are yearly lost in India by their poison, and it might safely be said that they are a more deadly enemy to our race than any other beasts of the field. Professor Huxley spoke first of the three classes indigenous to our own climate—the ringed snake, the coromlla, and the viper. Of these the viper alone was venomous, which the differences between its structure and that of the harmless British snakes helped to explain. It might be that the reason there were no snakes in Ireland was the multiplicity of its otber plagues. Everybody must be struck with the beauty of the harmless snakes, which formed the overwhelming majority—especially the grace with which they wreathed their bodies into circles and their fine eyes. The venomous snakes were not no beautiful. None admired our native 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 hundred 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 on their prey, twisting themselves round its body, crushing it into a shapeless and writhing mass, and at last swallowing it whole. He pointed out some very curious arrangement in the anatomical mechanism and jaw-bones illustrative of the statement that the snake cannot properly be said to swallow his prey; beholds on to it rather, gradually working it down its throat in a most leisurely irsaner, but never letting it go. 115 would take a sleep for six weeks before giving up his task, and if the morsel were 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 salivary glands for this purpose. The poison bag of the venomous snakes was notbing but a modification , of the salivary glands of the harmless species, the structure of both kinds being in almost all respects not only parallel throughout, but almost identical. As another instance of the clove relationship, it was shown that the sltarp channel-needle which conveys the poison cf the cobra and its congeners is nothing but the development of the tooth which these murderous reptiles possess in common with innocuous snakes. The fact that the salivary gland was the poison laboratory of the deadly snakes as well as the known properties of the saliva of dogs or other I icing creatures affected with rabies appeared to Professor Tinsley to point out the direction in which the solution of the difficult problem of the cause of snake-poisoning, and of a possible antidote against it. At present there was no man living who could heal the bite of the cobra, except by cauterisation in very fresh cases.