In hot countries, where there is no winter to send them off to sleep, the snakes are for some part of the year stupid and drowsy, and lie for several weeks in a nearly comatose condition. In this state they are too dull to be either timid or ill-tempered. On the other hand, when casting their skins, they are exceedingly nervous and vicious. All snakes are flesh eaters, and have very hearty appetites. They drink a large amount of water, and when a captive snake is well supplied with water, it can live for several weeks without food. However, it is doubtless hungry, and the experiment is a cruel one to try even on a snake. The serpents have many teeth, sharp, cone-like, and pointing backward. These teeth grow constantly; when they become at last old and worthless, they are at once renewed. Lucky snakes! no toothless gums, no worn-out, broken teeth, no aching teeth, no dentist’s bills. Nature keeps their teeth perfect from infancy to old age. Snakes lay eggs, and with the one exception of the python, which carries her eggs in a fold of her body, they deposit the eggs in safe places, leave them to hatch by sun heat, and let the little ones take care of themselves as soon as they come forth from the eggs. There are also a few species of snakes which have their little ones born alive, not in the egg. Snakes’ eggs are enclosed in a leathery skin like those of turtles. There is a widely spread story that the young of some kinds of snakes accompany their mother, and in time of danger she stretches open her mouth, and they take refuge in her throat, where they remain safely until the danger is passed. The keepers of the “snake-house” in the London Zoological Garden told me they had never known a case of the kind, and the best scientific writers have found no proofs that such story is true. Therefore this tale is open to grave doubts. The snake is a creature about which fables have been gathering from the earliest times. The snake was one of the first objects of false worship; coiled in a ring with its tail in its mouth, it was taken as a symbol of eternity. The Magi of the East used it as the emblem of their order and their arts; a serpent twined on a stick was also the emblem of physicians, and of the art of healing. It is strange that a creature exhibiting so many deadly varieties should have been chosen as the insignia of the physician, and not less strange that to the serpent should have been attributed great wisdom. Snakes exhibit fear and anger, but almost no wisdom or anything that seems like reason. Nearly all domestic animals--ants, bees, spiders, and many fishes--show far more forecast, ingenuity, architectural ability, than any snake. And yet “crafty as a snake,” “wise as a serpent,” are frequent expressions.