After the scenes witnessed during those seven weeks, no one could doubt the existence of maternal affection; and this was worth proving, as some authors would have persuaded us that snakes, and particularly the non-venomous ones, manifest total indifference regarding their eggs. The other important fact, an increased temperature, was also again observable, proving that a serpent can really hatch her eggs by the warmth of her own body. Last summer, 1881, another python laid about twenty eggs at the London Ophidarium, but, alas! neither were any of that brood hatched. For future broods, now that the fact of a raised temperature has been proved, the next scientific triumph will be to develop the young ones, dispensing with thermometers, and substituting perfect tranquillity, with every possible aid and comfort to the mother. That snakes under these peculiar circumstances do appreciate little ‘delicate attentions,’ ample proof has been afforded in the Jamaica ‘yellow boa’ (_Chilobothrus inornatus_), the species which on several occasions has produced broods in London, and the one in which Mr. P. H. Gosse verified the marvellous instinct of withholding its eggs when circumstances were not propitious for their deposition. This is one of the ‘Colubri’ alluded to by T. Rymer Jones, ‘which may at pleasure be rendered’ (_i.e._ render themselves) ‘viviparous by retarding their laying.’ But when Gosse published his work on Jamaica (1851), he did not appear to be aware of what Jones and Cuvier had said on this subject, but stated the result of his own observations. He had become convinced that this species of snake forms a sort of nest, and incubates its eggs; when subsequently, one that he had in captivity produced living young, he was staggered. ‘Is it possible,’ he wrote, ‘that a serpent normally oviparous, might retain the eggs within the oviduct until the birth of her young, when circumstances were not propitious?’ ‘Is it possible,’ again asks an American naturalist, so lately as 1879,—‘can it be true that _Heterodon platyrhinos_ and _Tropidonotus sipedon_’ (both harmless) ‘are sometimes viviparous and sometimes ovoviviparous?’ This writer, F. W. Cragin, had been told that the two above species were ovoviviparous (a word of no value as a definition), and he writes in the _American Naturalist_, vol. xiii. p. 710, that out of twenty-two eggs of Heterodon, ploughed up out of the sand in Long Island, one he put into alcohol to preserve it as found, and the others were hatched on the fourth day, showing that sometimes at least it is oviparous, as supposed are some of the _Eutænias_. Mr. Gosse describes one Jamaica boa in confinement, that was ill and inactive, refusing food. It was unusually vicious, and bit hard enough to draw blood, the effect of the fine teeth being like a severe cat-scratch. It rendered itself further offensive when disturbed, by emitting an insufferable odour, and at length gave birth to living young.