Possibly Something Of That Feeling About Serpents Has Survived In Me;
But In Time, As My Curiosity About All Wild Creatures Grew, As I
Looked More On Them With The Naturalist's Eyes, The Mystery Of The
Large Black Snake Pressed For An Answer.
It seemed impossible to
believe that any species of snake of large size and black as jet or
anthracite coal in colour could exist in any inhabited country without
being known, yet no person I interrogated on the subject had ever seen
or heard of such an ophidian.
The only conclusion appeared to be that
this snake was the sole one of its kind in the land. Eventually I
heard of the phenomenon of melanism in animals, less rare in snakes
perhaps than in animals of other classes, and I was satisfied that the
problem was partly solved. My serpent was a black individual of a
species of some other colour. But it was not one of our common
species-not one of those I knew. It was not a thick blunt-bodied
serpent like our venomous pit-viper, our largest snake, and though in
shape it conformed to our two common harmless species it was twice as
big as the biggest specimens I had ever seen of them. Then I recalled
that two years before my discovery of the black snake, our house had
been visited by a large unknown snake which measured two or three
inches over six feet and was similar in form to my black serpent.
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