The serpent and the specimen: The dual identity of the reptile in human thought

“ There are steep rocks, covered by creeping plants, so thick and luxuriant, that they would take you up to the neck, and these jungles are full of snakes and fortylegs as large as one's hand, and their bite is dreadful. I think we have had enough of reptiles to-night! Then there are deep gullies rent by earthquakes, full of slime, dwarf mangroves, wild cucumbers, and other weeds, as tall as a man; and there lurk in the thickets runaway negroes and others who are worse ”

“ Where prosperity has reigned, and fallen; where glory has flamed, and gone out; where beauty has dwelt, and passed away; where gladness was, and sorrow is; where the pomp of life has been, and silence and death brood in its high places, there this reptile makes his home, and mocks at human vanity. ”

“ The cabinet of turtles, alligators and snakes is over here,” and he led the way across the almost dark room, for the electric lamp only gave light in a small circle.
Professor Long was more enthusiastic over science than are most teachers, and he used live animals to illustrate points in biology, evolution and kindred studies. Hence he had quite a collection of reptiles, which were kept in a case especially constructed for them, where they could be fed and watched, and live under conditions as nearly approaching those of nature as possible. ”

“ The class Reptilia includes the lizards, snakes, tortoises, turtles, crocodiles, and alligators. Although popularly associated in the common mind with the batrachians, the reptiles are really more nearly related to the birds than to the salamanders and frogs. In general shape they more nearly resemble the batrachians, but in the structural condition of the internal body organs they are more like the birds. They are cold-blooded, and breathe exclusively by means of lungs, the forms which live in water coming to the surface to breathe. ”

“ There are now living upon the earth more than four thousand kinds or species of cold-blooded animals which we call reptiles, all of which are easily distinguishable into four principal groups: the serpents and lizards, the crocodiles, the turtles, and the tuatera. Their habits and forms are very diverse, but they all possess in common certain structural characters which sharply distinguish them from all other living creatures. A reptile may be tersely defined as a cold-blooded, backboned animal which breathes air throughout life. ”

“ Still the Permian has some life features of its own, and we must now turn to these. The first is the occurrence here, not only of the representatives of the great Batrachians of the coal period, but of true reptiles, acknowledged to be such by all naturalists. The animals of the genus Protorosaurus, found in rocks of this age both in England and Germany, were highly-organised lizards, having socketed teeth like those of crocodiles, and well-developed limbs, with long tails, perhaps adapted for swimming. ”

“ Beast-headed and human-shaped, human-headed and beast-shaped; dogs and hawks, crocodiles and owls; swamp-birds, bulls, rams, and swollen-bellied dwarfs, came this rout of gods and bowed before the stern and beauteous Sphinx that wore a woman’s head. ”

“ All the creatures in question are backboned, creeping animals. Those which are covered with horny scales, and which from their birth breathe by lungs only, as Crocodiles, Tortoises, Lizards, and Snakes, are the Reptiles. The rest, for instance, Newts or Efts, Frogs and Toads, are the Amphibia. Their skin is mostly smooth and clammy and devoid of scales; the young are different from the adult in so far as they breathe by gills and live in the water, before they are transformed into entirely lung-breathing, terrestrial creatures. ”

“ Science uses the word "reptile" in a more exact way, to define the assemblage of cold-blooded animals which in familiar description are separately named serpents, lizards, turtles, hatteria, and crocodiles. ”

“ The lizards, like the snakes, probably go back little or no further than the Age of Mammals. They are, with few exceptions, terrestrial animals of small size and inoffensive habits; the largest living examples scarcely exceed six feet in length, though within the period of man's existence there have been lizards five or six times as long.
Snakes or serpents, the latest, and in many respects the most specialized, of all reptiles, have not yet reached the culmination of their development, a statement which perhaps may not be truthfully made of any other group of reptiles. ”

“ This is the distinguishing character of beauty, and forms all the difference betwixt it and deformity, whose natural tendency is to produce uneasiness. Pleasure and pain, therefore, are not only necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence. And indeed, if we consider, that a great part of the beauty, which we admire either in animals or in other objects, is deriv'd from the idea of convenience and utility, we shall make no scruple to assent to this opinion. That shape, which produces strength, is beautiful in one animal ”

“ I shall add, as a corollary to this reasoning, that since no action can be laudable or blameable, without some motives or impelling passions, distinct from the sense of morals, these distinct passions must have a great influence on that sense. 'Tis according to their general force in human nature that we blame or praise. In judging of the beauty of animal bodies, we always [Pg 252] carry in our eye the economy of a certain species; and where the limbs and features observe that proportion which is common to the species, we pronounce them handsome and beautiful. ”

“ The cause of this confusion, I imagine, proceeds from our frequently perceiving the parts of the human and other animal bodies to be at once very beautiful, and very well adapted to their purposes; and we are deceived by a sophism, which makes us take that for a cause which is only a concomitant: this is the sophism of the fly, who imagined he raised a great dust, because he stood upon the chariot that really raised it. ”

“ Turn next to beasts; examine the head of a beautiful horse; find what proportion that bears to his body, and to his limbs, and what relation these have to each other; and when you have settled these proportions as a standard of beauty, then take a dog or cat, or any other animal, and examine how far the same proportions between their heads and their necks, between those and the body, and so on, are found to hold; I think we may safely say, that they differ in every species, yet that there are individuals, found in a great many species so differing, that have a very striking beauty. ”

“ I need say little on the trunk of the elephant, of such various usefulness, and which is so far from contributing to his beauty. How well fitted is the wolf for running and leaping! how admirably is the lion armed for battle! but will any one therefore call the elephant, the wolf, and the lion, beautiful animals? I believe nobody will think the form of a man’s leg so well adapted to running, as those of a horse, a dog, a deer, and several other creatures; at least they have not that appearance: yet, I believe, a well-fashioned human leg will be allowed to far exceed all these in beauty. ”

“ But the mere existence of individual variability and of some few well-marked varieties, though necessary as the foundation for the work, helps us but little in understanding how species arise in nature. How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one distinct organic being to another being, been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and missletoe; and only a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a quadruped or feathers of a bird ”

“ We know, as geologists, that the dynasty of the fish was succeeded by that of the reptile,—that the dynasty of the reptile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous quadruped,—and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped was succeeded by that of man as man now exists,—a creature of mixed character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alternations of enjoyment and suffering. ”

“ The general advance in creation has been incalculably great. The lower divisions of the vertebrata preceded the higher;—the fish [202] preceded the reptile, the reptile preceded the bird, the bird preceded the mammiferous quadruped, and the mammiferous quadruped preceded man. And yet, is there one of these great divisions in which, in at least some prominent feature, the present, through this mysterious element of degradation, is not inferior to the past? There was a time in which the ichthyic form constituted the highest example of life ”

“ The broad base of the superstructure, planted on the existing now, stretches across the entire scale of life, animal and vegetable; but it contracts as it rises into the past;—man—the quadrumana—the quadrupedal mammal—the bird—and the reptile—are each in succession struck from off its breadth, till we at length see it with the vertebrata, represented by only the fish, narrowing, as it were, to a point ”

“ We see, then, that it is not without some struggle that these cold-blooded reptiles have held their own122 in the world, nor is it to be wondered at that only these four types—tortoises, lizards, crocodiles, and snakes—should have managed to find room to live among the myriads of warm-blooded animals which have filled the earth. ”

“ All the foregoing rules and aids and difficulties in classification are explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that the natural system is founded on descent with modification; that the characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a common parent, and, in so far, all true classification is genealogical ”

“ The ‘worm’ stage in the development of most insects and the ‘fish’ stage of frogs are well known.
There are no more remarkable instances of individual evolution in the whole range of animal life. The fish, the reptile, the bird, the dog, and the human being—all vertebrates, in short—cannot for some time after their embryonic commencement be distinguished from each other. ‘The feet of lizards and mammals, the wings and feet of birds, and the hands and feet of men,’ says the illustrious Von Baer, as quoted by Darwin, ‘all arise from the same fundamental form’. ”

“ The fishes, frogs, reptiles, birds, and non-human mammals are human in having two body cavities, segmented internal skeletons, two pairs of limbs, skulls and spinal columns, red blood, brains, and dorsal cords; and in possessing two eyes, two ears, nostrils, and mouth opening out of the head. And finally all animals, including man, are related to all other animal forms by the great underlying facts of their origin, structure, composition, and destiny. All creatures, whether they live in the sea, in the heavens, or in subterranean glooms; whether they swim, fly, crawl, or walk ”

“ In fact, the peculiar nature of their development in the young and their atrophy in the adult forces such a conclusion upon us. The thymus, therefore, is, in all probability, an ontogenetic, and not a phylogenetic, rudiment. It might conceivably be exploited as a biogenetic recapitulation of a reptilian stage in man, just as the so-called fish-kidney of the human embryo is exploited for evolutionary interpretation. ”

“ Among the other cold-blooded animals—the frogs, newts, and reptiles—it is true we find less show of feeling, but we must remember that these are only poor remaining fragments of large groups which have disappeared from the earth. Even among the amphibia however a tame toad will become attached to one person; while among reptiles, lizards are full of intelligence and affection, and snakes are well-known for their fondness for their owners. ”

“ Add to this, that every species of creatures, which approach so often to man, as to familiarize themselves with him, show an evident pride in his approbation, and are pleas'd with his praises and caresses, independent of every other consideration. Nor are they the caresses of every one without distinction, which give them this vanity, but those principally of the persons they know and love; in the same manner as that passion is excited in mankind. All these are evident proofs, that pride and humility are not merely human passions, but extend themselves over the whole animal creation. ”

“ As animals are but little susceptible either of the pleasures or pains of the imagination, they can judge of objects only by the sensible good or evil, which they produce, and from that must regulate their affections towards them. Accordingly we find, that by benefits or injuries we produce their love or hatred; and that by feeding and cherishing any animal, we quickly acquire his affections; as by beating and abusing him we never fail to draw on us his enmity and ill-will.
Love in beasts is not caus'd so much by relation, as in our species ”