The importance of the antennæ to insects is evident to all who have ever watched the play of those active and beautifully-elaborate organs, their infinitely varying forms (often many times the length of the insect itself), their ceaseless play and independent action. Constantly waving, they lightly touch every contiguous object; investigating on all sides, they convey to insect intelligence all it requires to know regarding its environments. Like a herald or a scout, they literally ‘spy out the land,’ and thus become a guide and a guard to the tiny feeble creature which possesses them. Through them the owner learns all that is needful for its well-being. Much as an insect uses these exquisitely-constructed antennæ, so does a snake its long, slender, pliant, bifurcate, and highly-sensitive tongue. Ever busy, ever vigilant, exploring while barely touching each surface within reach, yet by night and by day conveying with that slight contact all necessary information to its owner. Sent out with the speed of a flash, it telegraphs back with like quickness the result of its discoveries. If we may assign intelligence to any single organ, we might affirm that there is more of what we consider rational intelligence in the tongue of a snake than in any other of its perceptive faculties. Probably the most important knowledge demanded by the reptile is conveyed, or, at least, confirmed by this organ. ‘_Colorée_,’ says Dumeril of the tongue, as botanists say of the part of a plant ordinarily green, as, for instance, a calyx; ‘coloured,’ but not what colour. This is precisely as we may describe the colour of a snake’s tongue. My attention was first drawn to this on reading one of Dr. Arthur Stradling’s communications to _Land and Water_, April 2, 1881. ‘It would be interesting to know why some snakes have red tongues and others black,’ he writes. ‘Here beside me, in a glass case, are two little snakes, both belonging to the same genus (_Tropidonotus_)—a seven-banded (_T. leberis_), and a moccasin (_T. fasciatus_), both hailing from the United States, and both alike in their habits and choice of food; yet it is a case of _rouge et noir_ with their lingual appendages.’