Scope and content
CONTENT:
Vol VIII Nº 94 NOVEMBER, 1923
OVERSEAS
Eve Among the Serpents
By Francis Yeats-Brown
SOFT-VOICED, delicate-handed young lady of twenty-
five was sitting at a desk by the window of a basement
room in the Natural History Museum of South
Kensington. Tall jars containing reptiles in spirits
of wine stood here and there. In a corner of the
room, an assistant worked among scales and test-tubes.
But Miss Joan B. Procter, Fellow of the Zoological Society, and
Curator-elect of the Reptiles at the Zoo, is a busy person, and did
not give me much time for staring about.
I noticed, as I took a seat at her desk, that various curly things in
test-tubes stood before her, and that there was a snake skin on her
blotting paper.
Since earliest childhood, Miss Procter has been devoted to reptiles.
It was a pet crocodile which was responsible for setting her infant
feet on the herpetological path. This little crocodile was of a species
that neither she nor her parents could precisely identify. Whether
or no she called it plain "Bill" in the nursery is beside the point:
the burning question which agitated her mind was, was it Crocodilus
niloticus or some rarer species? To solve the problem she took
her pet to the Natural History Museum, and it was there that she
met Dr. Boulanger, the greatest living authority on reptiles,
batrachians, and fish. From this meeting her life-work was
decided. As soon as she left school she worked under Dr.
Boulanger's direct supervision, learning science from him as well
as some of the routine work of the museum. When he retired in
1920, he arranged that she should carry on his work, and this she
has done ever since.
At the age of nineteen she read her first paper before the
Zoological Society. Recently she was elected a Member of the
Linnæan Society, and in November she is to take up her new and
Was it true that the cobra lowered its hood, and the rattlesnake
was dumb at her approach?
"Certainly not; I handle dangerous reptiles in the ordinary way,"
Miss Procter answered, "with an iron bar to keep their heads down.
Having handled snakes all my life, I suppose I have a certain
confidence in dealing with them, but that's all!"
All!—but how necessary confidence and experience will be to
Miss Procter I was able to gather from an inspection of her future
charges at the Zoo.
The big snakes, for instance, are generally untamable. Given
the slightest chance, they would seize and crush a man to death.
When the twenty-five-foot python that the Prince of Wales brought
back from India arrived at Regent's Park, it took ten strong men
to straighten out his terrible coils and put him into his London
apartment. Even now, the keeper would not trust him for an
instant.
This python, in common with others of his species, has a very
fickle appetite. At present he is hungry. On Friday evenings (his
weekly dinner hour) one can see him waiting at the door of his den,
his flat head waving to and fro, his forked tongue roving, and a
gleam of anticipation in his cloudy amber eyes. A goat is given
him, and he will contentedly swallow it whole, with horns and hair
complete. But presently his appetite may dwindle to a rabbit or
two, and then fade away altogether; indeed, pythons have been
known to go for a whole year without bite or sup.
Grass Snake swallowing a viper (see page 60). Photo by Mr. F. W. Bond.
Snakes, of course, are only a part of Miss Procter's charge. She
is deeply interested at present in foreign frogs and their habits.
Tortoises also will claim their attention. As to crocodiles and alligators,
they are hosts in themselves. From birth to death, all sorts
of accidents are liable to befall them, and when they have to have
a leg put in a splint, as sometimes happens, the operation is one
that demands a stout heart, as well as a steady hand.
I was shown an infant alligator which lives in tepid water behind
the scenes. He was no bigger than a lizard, although already six
years old (corresponding to about two years in the shorter-lived
human race), but, although so young, he was quite a little man
of the world, and lay placidly in my hand while I examined his
various devices for under-water comfort. After a few minutes, he
permitted himself to yawn, and disclosed his baby back teeth, which
in a hundred years or so, when he is full grown, will be strong
enough to masticate an ox. At present he is a cheerful little creature,
with no guile.
Who can tell what goes on in the minds of cold-blooded beasts?
No one knows.
A grass-snake recently tried to eat a viper who shared its
quarters. He began—rather foolishly, one is tempted to think—
at his companion's tail. Strange to tell, instead of objecting and
using its venom, the viper continued basking in the sun as if nothing
odd was happening. When three-quarters of the viper had disappeared,
the grass snake vomited it up again and made friends.
All this happened in the course of an afternoon, and is typical of
the strange lives that are being lived out in the Reptile House.
Why do rattlesnakes rattle? Why does the Mexican monitor
swallow eggs whole, as if it were taking pills? Why do baby alligators
have to be forcibly fed?
Who can fathom the psychology of reptiles? These things
are beyond the wit of man—
and Miss Procter. But her
position at the Zoo will un-
doubtedly add to our know-
ledge of that sinister creature
who whispered to our ances-
tress in Eden.
A young Alligator emerging from an egg.
Photo by Mr. F. W. Bond.
