There is yet one more of our English scientific writers who must be quoted, and who, though he wrote so far back as 1834, shows us that even then this tongue was far better understood by the French and German zoologists than ourselves. Roget, in his _Animal Physiology_ (one of the Bridgewater Treatises), says: ‘Hellmann has shown us that the slender, bifurcated tongue of snakes is used for the purposes of touch.’ It is to be regretted that we have no translation of this and of several other German ophiologists of whom mention is made by Roget and others. Lenz gives us to understand that in 1817 Hellmann had decided that a snake uses its tongue as an insect does its antennæ. And in watching with unprejudiced eyes the varying play of the organ, the similarity of action will at once be recognised. After all, how little can we ever know of these organs beyond conjecture! Who shall say whether each or both may not possess a sense of which we ourselves have no true perception? Close observers are convinced that the tongue of a snake is endowed with peculiar sensibilities; and it is the more astonishing, therefore, that reason and observation have so long been blinded and enslaved by prejudice regarding it. Some naturalists think that the sense of smell lies in antennæ. The sense of smell itself is dull in snakes; yet they have means of ascertaining what other animals learn by smell. Says Huxley, ‘The great majority of the sensations we call taste are in reality complex sensations, into which smell and even touch largely enter.’[34] It is certain that the snake’s tongue is in constant use for some purpose or other, though beyond what we see of its form and actions we can only speculate, or, at best, draw conclusions from observation.