Excerpt from Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life To the many friends who have repeatedly asked me, 'What Could induce you to take up such a horrid subject as snakes?' a few words of explanation must be offered. Some words of apology are also due that I, a learner myself, should aspire to instruct others. I cant do better, therefore, than tell the history of this book from its birth, and in so doing cancel both obligations. The little history will be a sort of Ophidiana, or gossip about snakes; and in this I only follow the example of most herpetologists, who, when writing exclusively on these reptiles, preface their work with some outline of the history of ophiology, and generally with an excuse for introducing the unwelcome subject at all. There is still reason to lament that traditional prejudice invests everything in the shape of a serpent with repulsive qualities, and that these prejudices are being only very slowly swept away by the besom of science. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.