Nevertheless, after some research I learnt enough of snake nature to feel safe in proceeding with my book of _Adventures_, and in presenting it to a publisher. ‘As a gift-book no one would look at it, and as an educational work there would be no demand for it,’ was its encouraging reception. This was about ten years ago; and so far from inducing me to relinquish the subject, I began to aspire to become a means of assisting to overcome these prejudices. For the space of two years the anticipated ‘sequel’ to my _American Pets_ went the round of the London publishers of juvenile works, and to several in Scotland. It was read by many of them, who professed to have been unexpectedly and ‘extremely interested’ in it—‘_but_’—none could be persuaded to ‘entertain so repulsive a subject.’ One member of a publishing house distinguished for the high standard of its literature, positively admitted among his insurmountable objections, that when a child his mother had never permitted him to look through a certain favourite volume late in the day, ‘for fear the pictures of snakes in it should prevent his sleeping!’ An editor of a magazine told me he should lose his subscribers if he put snakes in its pages; and another made excuse that his children would not look at the magazine with a snake in it. Perhaps this is not so surprising when we reflect that until within a late date snakes in children’s books, if represented at all, are depicted as if with full intent of creating horror. They are represented with enormously extended jaws, and—by comparison with the surrounding trees or bushes—of several hundred feet in length; sometimes extending up a bank or over a hedge into the next field, or winding round a rock or a gnarled trunk, that must be—if the landscape have any pretensions to perspective—a long way off. Slender little tree snakes of two or three feet long are represented winding round and round thick stems and branches strong enough to support you. Into the chasm of a mouth from which an enormous instrument (intended for a tongue) is protruding, a deer the size of a squirrel (by comparison), or a squirrel the size of a mouse, is on the point of running meekly to its doom. No wonder children ‘skip’ the few pages devoted to snakes in their natural history books, and grow up full of ignorance and prejudices regarding them. In no class of literature are original and conscientious illustrations more required than to replace some of those which reappear again and again, and have passed down from encyclopædias into popular works, conveying the same erroneous impressions to each unthinking reader. The strongly-expressed opinions of publishers convinced me that the prejudices of adults must first be overcome before children could be persuaded to look at a snake as they would look at a bird or a fish, or to enter the Reptile House at the Zoological Gardens without the premeditated ‘Aughs!’ and ‘Ughs!’ and shudders.