"Walking in an orchard near Tyneham House, in Dorsetshire, I came upon an old adder basking in the sun, with her young around her; she was lying on some grass that had been long cut, and had become smooth and bleached by exposure to the weather. Alarmed by my approach, I distinctly saw the young ones run down their mother's throat. At that time I had never heard of the controversy respecting the fact, otherwise I should have been more anxious to have killed the adder, to prove the case. As it was, she escaped while I was more interested in the circumstance I witnessed than in her destruction." Exactly the same thing is told of the North American Rattlesnake. Hunter says, that when alarmed, the young ones, which are eight or ten in number, retreat into the mouth of the parent, and reappear on its giving a contractile muscular token that the danger is past.[148] M. Palisot de Beauvois asserts that he saw a large rattlesnake which he had disturbed in his walks immediately coil itself up and open its jaws, when in an instant five small ones that were lying by it rushed into its open mouth. He concealed himself, and watched the snake, and in a quarter of an hour saw her discharge them. He then approached a second time, when the young ones rushed into the parent's mouth more quickly than before, and the animal immediately moved off, and escaped. The phenomenon is said to have been observed in regard to some of the venomous snakes of India, but I cannot now refer to details. Confirmation of a reported fact is sometimes derived from collateral evidence, and such is not wanting in the present case. The phenomenon is not confined to serpents; it has been observed in their near relatives, the lizards. Mr Edward Newman, while guarding the subject with a philosophical caveat, furnishes his readers with the following highly interesting and germane statement:--"1st, My late lamented friend, William Christy, jun., found a fine specimen of the common scaly lizard with two young ones. Taking an interest in everything relating to Natural History, he put them into a small pocket vasculum to bring home; but when he next opened the vasculum the young ones had disappeared, and the belly of the parent was greatly distended; he concluded she had devoured her own offspring; at night the vasculum was laid on a table, and the lizard was therefore at rest: in the morning the young ones had reappeared, and the mother was as lean as at first. 2d, Mr Henry Doubleday, of Epping, supplies the following information:--A person whose name is English, a good observer, and one, as it were, brought up in Natural History, under Mr Doubleday's tuition, once happened to set his foot on a lizard in the forest, and while the lizard was thus held down by his foot, he distinctly saw three young ones run out of her mouth. Struck by such a phenomenon, he killed and opened the old one, and found two other young ones in her stomach, which had been injured when he trod upon her.