the same reason. The close-scaled burrowing snakes, with their hard and strong cuirass all round them, might have nothing to fear from a furze bush; but this is mere speculation. That fine, sharp spines or prickles, and therefore a horse-hair rope, would incommode the tender intermediate epidermal folds of other snakes, we can well suppose. Had they sense enough to _leap_ the obstacle, this they could easily do, after the manner of ‘leaping’ already described; but the ‘leap’ is only an instinctive action used in pursuit or escape; and it may be equally instinctive to turn aside from uncomfortable obstacles, whether prickly pears or horse-hair ropes. Mr. Ruskin, in his highly-entertaining lecture on ‘Snakes,’ at the London Institution, March 1880 (a lecture which, by the way, was artistic, poetic, figurative, imaginative—‘Snakes’ from a Ruskin, but not a zoological, point of view), remarked ‘that no scientific book tells us why the reptile _is_ a “serpent,” _i.e._ serpentine in its motions, and why it cannot go straight.’ Now, may not the fact that snakes have acquired these ever-varying sinuations arise from their sensitiveness to the slightest, and what would be to other creatures almost impalpable, obstructions in their path?—mere inequalities which in their lazy nature it is easier, they know not why, to circumvent than to surmount; because they _can_ go straight, and _do_ go straight when the way is plain. Rymer Jones, in his _Organization of the Animal Kingdom_, thinks that their sense of touch from the nature of their integument must be extremely imperfect; they being ‘deprived of any limbs which can be regarded as tactile organs,’ p. 753. But close observation leads one to agree rather with a much older writer, Roget, who, in his _Animal Physiology_, intimates that the peculiar conformation of serpents must be exceedingly favourable to the acquisition of correct perceptions of touch, and that these perceptions which lead to a perfect acquaintance with the tangible properties of surrounding bodies must contribute much to the sagacity of snakes;—that their whole body is a hand, conferring some of the advantages of that instrument. That this latter faculty is strictly and marvellously the case, we shall presently see, owing to the flexibility of the spine, and its capability of grasping and twining round objects of almost any shape, and of taking, as Roget says, ‘their exact measure.’ For this grasping power is not confined to the constricting snakes only. In all snakes a great flexibility is abundantly provided for in the construction of ‘these lithe and elegant beings,’ as Rymer Jones in unprejudiced language calls them (p. 724 of the book above quoted); ‘the spinal column admits the utmost pliancy of motion in any required direction.’