- Arthur Morrison
- J.A. Shepherd
- There is a certain coolness, almost to be called a positive want of cordiality, between snakes and human beings. More, the snake is never a social favourite among the animals called lower. Nobody makes an intimate friend of a snake. Popular natural history books are filled and running over with anecdotes of varying elegance and mendacity, setting forth extraordinary cases of affection and co-operation between a cat and a mouse, a horse and a hen, a pig and a cock¬ roach, a camel and a lobster, a cow and a wheel¬ barrow, and so on ; but there is never a snake in one of these quaint alliances.