tenant in the Sixteenth regiment of Maine volunteers, which saw active service in Grant's Virginia campaigns. After the close of the war he studied theology at the Andover Theological Seminary, graduated there in 1867, and filled pastorates in Bangor, Me., and Quincy, Ill., until 1882, when he was called to the pulpit of the First Congregational Church in New Haven, Conn. His publications include: The Religious Feeling: A Study for Faith (1877); Old Faiths in New Lights (1879); The Orthodox Theology of To-Day (1881); The Reality of Faith (1884); Christian Facts and Forces (1887); Christian Ethics (1892); and The Place of Death in Evolution (1897).

SMYTH, WILLIAM HENRY (1788-1865). An English naval officer, the son of an American loyalist. He was born in Westminster; entered the English navy from the merchant marine in 1804; saw much active service; and became a lieutenant in 1813 and a commander in 1815. During the next nine years he was engaged in making a survey of the Italian, Sicilian, Greek, and North African coasts, and constructed charts that form the basis of those still in use.

He

was one of the founders of the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was president in 184950, and was president of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1845-46. He attained the rank of admiral in 1863. Among his works are: Memoir of the Resources, Inhabitants, and Hydrography of Sicily and Its Islands (1824); The Cycle of Celestial Objects for the Use of Naval, Military, and Private Astronomers (2 vols., 1844); and The Mediterranean: A Memoir, Historical and Nautical (1854).

SNAIL (AS. snægel, Hessian Ger. Schnegel, OHG. snecko, Ger. Schnecke, snail; connected with AS. snacu, Icel. snākr, snōkr, Eng. snake, from AS. snican, to creep, Eng. sneak, and ultimately with Skt. naga, snake). The name applied to many gastropod mollusks, but more especially to the terrestrial air-breathing gastropods (Pulmonata) and to the fresh-water gastropods such as the pond-snails (Physa, Limnæa, etc.). The Pulmonata are gastropods with two pairs of ten tacles, the nervous ganglia concentrated around the esophagus, and fitted to breathe air through a pallial cavity formed by the union of the front edge of the mantle with the neck region. The spiral shell is either well developed, or in the slugs either vestigial or absent. are either at the base of the tentacles or situated at the end of the larger pair. Snails are mostly plant-eaters or live on dead leaves, cutting their food by means of the long slender rasp-like radula or lingual ribbon.' The eggs of the common Physa (q.v.) are laid in the early spring and three or four weeks later from fifty to sixty embryos with well-formed shells may be found in the capsule. After passing through the cleavage, gastrula, and trochosphere stages a definite veliger stage is finally attained. Soon the definite

The eyes

USE AS FOOD. In Southern Europe and France snails are everywhere eaten, and snail-gardens (escargotières) still exist in France, also at Brunswick, Ulm, in Germany, and at Copenhagen. The markets at Paris, Marseilles, Bordeau, Toulouse, Nantes, and also those of Algiers, are chiefly supplied by snails gathered from the open country, and especially from the vineyards, where the 'edible snail' (Helix pomatia) abounds. When snails are eaten directly after being collected they may, from having fed on some poisonous matters, prove harmful. They should be fed in gardens previous to being eaten. Consult: Binney, Terrestrial Mollusks of the United States (Boston, 1851); Ingersoll, “In a Snailery," in Wild Life of Orchard and Field (New York, 1902).

SNAKE (AS. snacu, OIcel. snākr, snōkr, snake, from AS. snican, to creep, Eng. sneak; ultimately connected with Skt. nāga, snake), or SERPENT. A reptile representing the highly specialized saurian order Ophidia. Snakes differ from their nearest relatives the lizard, primarily nected by an elastic band. They agree with them in having the two halves of the lower jaw conin many particulars, and the external resemblance is so close in some cases that the true relationships were long confused. snakes as a whole form an ascending series, deAlthough generacy has played an important part in their phylogenetic history. This degeneracy consists mainly in the reduction of the mechanism for rapid movement, the shortening of the tail, and the decrease in the size of the eye and mouth. The most highly developed are those with a poison apparatus, and among these the rattlesnakes seem most advanced. The form is greatly elongated and ordinarily cylindrical, but in the sea-snakes (q.v.) is likely to be laterally compressed in adaptation to an aquatic life. The body is clothed in scales (q.v.), which are folds in the skin, lacking osteoderms and covered with a horny epidermis. Ordinarily they overlap, like tiles on a roof, but sometimes are flat and edge to edge, like tiles in a floor. They are small on the back and sides, lie in a definite number of equilateral longitudinal rows, and frequently are ridged or 'keeled;' but on the ventral surface (except in the burrowers and sea-snakes) are so large as to reach from side to side, forming ‘abdominal scutes' (gastroleges in front of cloaca and wrosteges behind), each attached at both ends to a pair of ribs. The scales are often enlarged on the head into plates or shields. (See illustration.) The arrangement and shape of both the headplates and the gastrosteges are of great service in classification. In some the nasal plates are broad

1, Side view of head of a colubrine snake; 2, front view! 3, top of head; 4, under side of head and throat; 5, vent and anal plates; 6, side of a part of the body. Numbers and letters: e, eye; n, nostril; 1, rostral plate; 2, nasal; 3, loreal; 4, preocular or anteorbital; 5, postocular or postorbital; 6, temporal; 7, internasal; 8, prefrontal; 9, frontal; 10, superciliary or supraocular; 11, parietal; 12, notch in rostral for protrusion of tongue; 13, labial; 14, infralabials; 15, gular; 16, mental; 17, submental; 18, abdominal scutes or gastrosteges; 19, dorsal scales; 20, keeled body scales; 21, unkeeled lateral scales; 22, divided anal scute covering anus; 23, wrosteges.

the face, and then is peeled off by the animal scraping through a crevice or a fold of its own body; even the coating of the eye is included.

that they are capable of separation to a great extent. The teeth are simple, sharp, curved backward and solidly fixed in sockets. When broken or lost they are renewed. There are typically two rows on the upper jaw and two on the palate (maxillaries, palatines, and pterygoids), and each mandible of the lower jaw bears a single row; but vipers and rattlesnakes have none in the upper jaw except the poison fangs, which are depressible at will and fold back out of the way of food entering the mouth. The process of swallowing is laborious. With a large victim this process may last for hours, the head and throat be stretched to almost bursting, and the snake become nearly exhausted by its efforts. A great amount of saliva is poured out in this process, but the story that snakes cover their prey with slime before swallowing it is a fable.

Small mam

Most snakes are carnivorous. mals, frogs, reptiles, and insects form the bulk of the diet of ordinary land species. Some of them eat eggs, and a few species are fond of milk. Many of them are of great assistance to the agriculturist by devouring the grasshoppers, mice, gophers, and other pests of the farm in great numbers. The stomach is long and narrow, as also are the lobes of the liver. Snakes drink much water when in active life; yet they possess no urinary bladder. The intestines are highly absorbent. The heart is placed well forward. The lungs are elongated, and when bilobed, as in boas and rattlesnakes, one lobe is far larger than the other. The trachea is long, is provided with air sacs, and opens far forward in the mouth, all of which arrangements guard against suffocation during the tedious process of swallowing. The forcible expulsion of air from the trachea makes the hissing sound which is the serpent's only vocal utterance; but the bullsnake has special tracheal arrangements (see illustration) by which its hiss may be increased to a sort of bellow.

NASAL APPENDAGES OF HERPETON.

No

All snakes except the purely aquatic ones move by means of the abdominal scutes. snake can leap from the ground, though the more active sometimes hurl themselves from bough to bough, or down to the ground. The vertebræ are extremely numerous, sometimes nearly 300, and are concave in front and convex behind, connected by free ball-and-socket joints, and provided with complicated processes, one effect of which is to prevent any considerable vertical motion. Every vertebra except the atlas bears a pair of ribs, articulating by the capitular head only, and united at their ventral extremities (in the absence of any sternum) by cartilages attached to the gastrosteges. The ribs admit of much movement and have an extensive and powerful musculature. The bones of the skull are not soldered together (except those of the brain-case), but are loosely joined by elastic cartilages. The two halves of the lower jaw are connected by a ligament so loose and elastic

MOUTH OF A SNAKE.

Open mouth of the bull or pine snake (q.v.) showing the (black) tongue and opening of the windpipe: a, sheath of the tongue; b, epiglottis; c, glottis.

Snakes have a well-developed nervous system, and are intelligent. Many may be tamed and show docility and regard for their friends. Most of them are very timid and harmless, endeavoring to frighten their enemies by menacing attitudes (see HOGNOSE) or otherwise. Even the well-armed poisonous ones, though sullen and resistant, are rarely aggressive. All have good eyes, and some of the many nocturnal forms very large ones; but the eyes have no lids and are not movable. No external ear is present, but a complicated internal apparatus exists, so that snakes hear very well and are affected by musical sounds. The sense of taste is probably deficient, but that of smell is acute, and many serpents, as the