August 3, 1877.—A gentleman, to all appearance well-bred and intelligent, told his two boys, ‘That’s the sting,’ as they were watching the play of a snake’s tongue in one of the cages. The boys looked wonderingly at the terrible instrument, and were evidently anxious to know more about it, and turned to ask their father. But he had passed on, and was then calling to them to look at something else. July 1880.—A lady, apparently the governess of two girls of about twelve and fourteen, and of a boy of about eight, who were with her, was conscientiously endeavouring to blend instruction with amusement, and was telling them some strange and hitherto unheard-of facts about the snakes; as, for instance, that the rattlesnake was now going to ‘crush a guinea-pig by winding itself round it;’ for it was feeding-day, and the keeper had just put poor piggy into the cage. But the children got tired of waiting to see what did not occur; the rattlesnake was merely investigating matters by means of its useful tongue. ‘Now, watch it!’ cried the lady eagerly, ‘and you’ll see it lick the guinea-pig with its poisonous tongue.’ Neither was this feat performed by the Crotalus, and as the children got tired of waiting, and were impatient to ‘see something else,’ the party moved on. But the reader will be weary of hearing what the tongue of a snake is _not_, and be desirous of knowing what it _is_; and to this purpose we will devote another chapter. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. _THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE._ PART II.—WHAT IT _IS_. IF only by the law of compensation, another chapter must be devoted to the innocent tongue of a snake. It has been an object of hatred and aversion for untold ages, and the misrepresentation of it, and the abuse of it, would fill many chapters. Were it endowed with speech, and the words of St. James applied to it,—‘the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity,’—no stronger animosity could be displayed. Happily, this animosity is by degrees dying away; but only by degrees, as we have seen, some writers during the last twenty years having been undergoing a sort of transition state with regard to the use of the tongue, inasmuch as, while they have arrived at the conviction that it does not ‘sting,’ they are not yet quite clear as to what it does do. Some few have even clung to the lubrication theory. _Popular writers_, to speak more correctly, not scientific ones. Still, it is the popular writers who most influence the casual reader. To satisfy a passing interest, we turn to these, to the books they quote, and next to encyclopedias, and not to scientific text-books, where we are beset by technicalities which are in themselves a study to be first mastered. Otherwise, from scientific works a good deal might have been learned long ago about this exceedingly wonderful organ, the tongue of a snake.