But the Hindû custom of placing eggs for snakes at their serpent festivals must be too familiar to most of my readers to need further comment. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. _DO SNAKES DRINK?_ PERHAPS in no other branch of natural history has such a degree of interest been awakened during the last decade, and such an advance made as in ophiology. The result of a spirit of inquiry thus set afloat is that information is being continually elicited from travellers and observers. Those who now entertain predilections for this branch of science, will many of them admit that whatever interest they feel in the subject has been of a comparatively recent date; that since they have at all studied snake nature, they have repeatedly had to combat with preconceived notions. Again and again they have been ‘surprised to learn that so-and-so’—some now established fact, perhaps—is the case, when they had ‘_always_ thought’—probably something quite the contrary. This has been frequently verified in my own experience in my correspondence with really scholarly men, who have generously admitted as much. Not a few, during my ten years’ study of the Ophidia, have traced their interest in snakes to my own enthusiasm. Preconceived errors are not to be wondered at when we consider that, apart from scientific works, so much that has been related of serpents has been mingled with prejudice, fable, and tradition, clouding our intelligence at the very outset. Nor need we hesitate in admitting our misconceptions, when we find scientific men themselves devoting page after page to a mooted question, and after all, sometimes venturing to sum up a given subject with a modest doubt only. (Would that the less scientific writers were equally cautious in their statements!) Whether snakes drink, and _what_ they drink, have been among these debated questions. Those who possess a love for natural history are, of course, acquainted with the works of the eminent naturalist, Dr. Thomas Bell, on our native fauna; and those who admit their interest in the much-maligned snakes have included in their studies his _British Reptiles_.[14] In one portion of that work, where science is so charmingly blended with personal observations, we are carried on to the heaths and commons to watch our pretty little agile lizards skim across the grass, and flit away with legs too fleet for us to follow them. We linger on the banks of a stream where a ring snake lies in wait for a frog; and then we are conducted into Mr. Bell’s study, where the same harmless creature, now tamed, is nestling in his sleeve, or lapping milk from his hand.