The Natural History of Selborne

“there the snake throws her enamel’d skin”

About the middle of this month we found in a field near a hedge the slough of a large snake, which seemed to have  been newly cast.  From circumstances it appeared as if turned wrong side outward, & drawn off backward, like a stocking, or a woman’s glove.  Not only the whole skin, but the scales from the very eyes are peeled off, & appear in the head of the slough like a pair of spectacles.  The reptile, at the time of changing his coat, had intangled himself intricately in the grass & weeds, so that the friction of the stlaks & blades might promote this curious shifting of his exuviae.  “lubrica serpens/Exuit in spinis vestem.”   It would be a most entertaining sight could a person be an eye-witness to such a feat, & see the snake in the act of changing his garment.  As the convexity of the scales of the eyes in the slough are now inward, that circumstance alone is a proof that the skin has been  turned: not to mention that now the present inside is much darker, than the outer.  If you look through the scales of the snake’s eyes from the concave side, viz: as the reptile used them, they lessen objects much.  Thus it appears from what has been said that snakes crawl out of the mouth of their own sloughs, & quit the tail part last; just as eels are skinned by a cook maid.  While the scales of the eyes are growing loose, & a new skin is forming, the creature, in appearance, must be blind, & feel itself in an awkward uneasy situation.

Bunches of snake’s eggs are found under some straw near the hot-beds.  Several snakes haunted my out-let this summer, & cast their sloughs in the garden, & elsewhere.  Cran-berries are offered at the door.

Mr. Chr. Etty has taken the young Cuckow, & put it in a cage, where the hedge-sparrows feed it.  No old Cuckow has been seen to come near it.  Mr CHarles Etty brought down with him from London in the coach his two finely-chequered tortoises, natives of the island of Madagascar, which appear to be Testudo geometrica, Linn., and the Testudo tessellat, Raii.  One of them was small, & probably a male, weighing about five pounds; the other , which was undoubtedly a female, because it layed an egg the day after it’s arrival, weighed ten pounds and a quarter.  The egg was round, & white, & much resembling in size & shape the egg of an owl.  Ray says of this species that the shell was “Ellipticae seu ovatae figurae solidae plus quam dimidia pars”: & again, “Ex omnibus quas unquam vidi maxime concava.” Ray’s quadrup: 260.  The head, neck, & legs of these were yellow.  These tortoises in the morning when put into the coach at Kensignton were brisk, & well; but the small one dyed the first night that they came to Selborne; & the other, two nights after, having received, as it should seem, some Injury on their Journey.  When the female was cleared of the contents of her body, a bunch of eggs of about 30 in number was found in her.

Vipers are big with young.

Snake gorges a toad much larger than itself.  When full it is very sluggish, & helpless, & easily taken.

Female viper taken full of young, 15 in number: gaped & menaced as soon as they were out of the belly of their dams.