GOSSIP from the Zoological Gardens to confirm what has been so often said, namely, that nine out of every ten of the visitors to the Ophidarium will point to the tongue of a snake and exclaim, ‘Look at its sting!’ seems too trivial and too defiantly challenging the credulity of my readers, to introduce here. Nevertheless, that it is necessary emphatically to state not only that the tongue of a snake is not its sting, but that a snake has no sting at all, you will admit the very next time you go there. You will hear not only the Monday, but the _Sunday_ visitors—well dressed, and apparently well educated persons—say to each other when watching a snake, ‘That’s its sting!’ I must be permitted, therefore, to ‘gossip’ a moment in confirmation. One Friday, in April 1881, just before the time when the public were excluded at feeding hours, we were watching the movements of a pretty little harmless snake, the rapid quivering of whose tongue denoted excitement of some kind. Probably it was anticipating the frog in store for it, as this was feeding day. Its tongue was unusually active, and was exserted to its extreme length, its motions being almost invisible in their rapidity. Two gentlemen drew near, and also stopped before this cage. One of them, a tall, dark man, looked like a foreigner; but he was talking pure English to his friend, and had been talking a good deal about the snakes, as if he were familiar with their habits. ‘From the Tropics,’ observed my companion, _sotto voce_, and looking as if we might hear something worth knowing from this large, loud-voiced visitor. ‘See _that_?’ he presently exclaimed to his friend. ‘Look there!’ ‘That thing it keeps putting out of its mouth?’ ‘Yes. That’s its sting. One touch of that, just one little touch, and you’re a dead man. There’s no cure for it!’ No less than four different parties made similar remarks in our hearing during our short visit to the reptile house that day, and these not of the common crowd either. First, two lads who looked as if they ought to have known better. Next, a party of several persons, of whom the one more particularly addressed when his friend informed him, ‘That’s the sting that it jerks out so,’ replied, ‘Ah, but they extract it!’ Thirdly, a young gentleman remarked to his lady companion, ‘See how it keeps darting out its sting!’ to whom she ejaculated, ‘Oh, the fearful creature!’ Fourthly, the tall man. And all this of poor little innocent _Tropidonotus_ (our common ring snake), with not even a fang to injure you!