Snakes have no eyelids, and can therefore never close their eyes, a fact which has given rise to a vulgar belief that they never sleep. Their eyes are, however, well developed, particularly in those snakes which live above ground, and are covered with a transparent layer of the epidermis, forming a capsule which is moulted with the cuticle. Physiologists tell us that it is moistened with the lachrymal fluid. Bright and glistening is the serpent’s eye, except previous to desquamation, when, from the new skin forming beneath, it becomes opaque and dull, and the snake is blind for a few days more or less, according to its health at the time. Rymer Jones considers the transparent membrane cast with the slough a real eyelid in a framework of regular scales; Huxley (in the lecture already alluded to) said snakes’ eyelids are as if our two eyelids were joined. In form and appearance this moulted cuticle is singularly clear and shapely: on the outer side, like a miniature watchglass; but within it is a perfect cup, standing up and out from the surrounding scales like a cup in a saucer, the rounded base of which is the transparent skin, as here seen. [Illustration: Illustration of eye covering.] For the process of sloughing or casting the skin, the term desquamation—literally, an unscaling—is often used; but this word seems rather to imply an unhealthy action, as if the cuticle peels off in pieces, than the normal operation, which is to shed it entire. It is a matter of surprise—if we are to believe what we read—that few naturalists seem to have witnessed this process, so as to be able to describe it from their own observations; but this must be due more to lack of interest than of opportunity, since the occurrence is very frequent. Those in the vicinity of Zoological Gardens have no excuse for not observing it; yet so lately as Oct. 1879, we find a writer in _Nature_, vol. xx. p. 530, attempting to describe the ‘skin-shedding,’ with the admission that he has never witnessed the process, nor, he believes, ‘has any observer’! He thinks snakes shed the skin ‘as if you turned a narrow hem, or a glove-finger by a knotted thread fastened at the tip,’ and which of course would draw the tip _inside_ the finger. The glove tip is to represent the tail of the snake, which, as he supposes, adhering _at the tip_, is drawn along _inwards_ as the snake proceeds to crawl out of its own mouth, or its cuticle’s mouth—which has already become loosened round the lips. This, in the mind of that writer, satisfactorily accounts for the skin being usually found reversed! Can he have never seen a silkworm change its skin; or found the slough of a common caterpillar adhering to its tail; or observed the appearance of its mouth previous to the moulting? True, a slow-worm sometimes leaves its slough in a crumpled-up condition, exactly like the silk-worm’s. This I have seen. On the other hand, the same little reptile, on another occasion, crawled out of its coat, leaving it