It may be objected, ‘Why occupy space by quoting such old wives’ fables?’ I reply, because they have already been so abundantly quoted; and to such fables are in great part due the erroneous impressions which exist to the present day. Several members of the _Heterodon_ family have from time to time been in our London collection. Friends of mine have had _Heterodons_ in their keeping as pets; I have often handled them, and found them gentle and inoffensive in every way. They are indeed so popularly and peculiarly interesting that they will claim a page presently, the present chapter being devoted exclusively to ophidian lungs, not human lungs, supposed to be destroyed by them! While admitting various degrees and qualities of hissing, we may give a passing mention to Du Chaillu’s snakes, all of which appear to be of the whistling, as well as of the ‘springing’ kind. He saw ‘an enormous black shining snake, loathsome and horrid.’ ... ‘Then the fellow gave a spring, and whistled in a most horrid manner.’ And when he was wounded, he again ‘gave a sharp whistle.’ On another occasion, while a Goree man was playing with a large Naja, ‘the air around seemed to be filled with the whistling sound of the creature,’ and so on. Another African snake, the ‘Green Mamba,’ has such very bad manners that it not only hisses, but spits and darts at you. In this instance my informant was a young lady, who had ‘seen it!’ Somewhat more perplexing, because more deserving of notice, is what Livingstone tells us of a serpent called _Nega-put-sane_, or ‘serpent of a kid,’ which ‘utters a cry by night exactly like the bleating of that animal,’ and that he had ‘heard one at a spot where no kid could possibly have been.’[42] ‘_Il canta como un gallo_,’ said Albert Seba of an astonishing snake in Hayti and St. Domingo once. ‘Beyond a hissing and often a peculiar drumming noise, snakes emit no sound,’ says Krefft, one of our very able authorities.[43] This experienced writer does not positively affirm that the ‘drumming’ is produced by the voice, and it is more likely to proceed from the beating of an agitated tail, an action which may be frequently witnessed in excited snakes. Dr. Otto Wucherer saw this in a South American snake, _Xenodon colubrinus_. ‘It has the habit of striking the ground rapidly with the tail when irritated’ (_Zoo. Soc. Proc._ 1861). So do _Spilotes variabilis_, and some others. So also does the Pine snake, whose tail ends in a horny tip, ‘like a four-sided spike,’ and which vibrates like a crotalus in rudiment, or strikes the ground.