Most of my readers also, whether naturalists or not, are familiar with some of the numerous works on India, its creeds, customs, and superstitions, where mention is so frequently made of cobra-worship, and of the natives setting saucers of milk near its hole to conciliate and propitiate the serpent. Familiar to us all, too, is the picture of a little child with a bowl of milk on its lap, and a snake receiving a tap with the spoon to check the too greedy intrusion of its head into the bowl, but into which, according to the story, it had been accustomed and permitted to dip its tongue. Some persons place that story in Wales; others, and with better reason, trace it to New England. The child and its surroundings, the size of the snake, all justify this latter belief, and that the intruder is the notorious milk-stealer so common in the United States, the ‘black snake,’ or Racer (introduced p. 64). In the face of these well-known facts, it may seem strange to propose the question, ‘Do snakes ever drink?’ and still stranger to affirm that this was lately a disputed point among some of our scientific writers. ‘On s’ignore,’ says Schlegel, ‘si les serpents boivent, et s’il est juste d’opiner pour la negative; toutefois on n’a jamais aperçu des fluides dans ceux dont on a examiné l’estomac.’[15] Schlegel, when he wrote, had not the benefit of Mr. Bell’s experience, and as a foreigner, probably he had not read Jesse’s _Gleanings_ nor White’s _Selborne_; nor, as a scientific student, had he time to bestow on promiscuous works on India, which, by the way, were not so numerous then as now. But there are several well-known milk-drinking snakes in America which had been described by writers prior to Schlegel. This learned author, however, puts down the milk-loving snakes among the ‘fables’ and ‘prejudices;’ and, as we have seen, dismissed the water-drinkers with a doubt. Mr. Bell’s work has enjoyed upwards of thirty years’ popularity, and his milk-drinking pet has been quoted by scores of writers of both adult and juvenile books. Thomas Bell, F.L.S., F.G.S., was secretary to the Royal Society; Professor of Zoology of King’s College, London; and one of the Council of the Zoological Society of London. He was also a ‘corresponding member’ of the learned societies of Paris and Philadelphia, and of the Boston Society of Natural History.