Introduction
By profession, JG Wood was a clergyman, but he had a gift for making science accessible to ordinary people. From the early 1850s, he was in demand as an author and lecturer on natural history both at home and abroad: he delivered the prestigious Lowell Lectures in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1883-84. In this passage, he takes a look at the hooded cobra, in the light of anatomy and of India’s sacred legends.
ONE notable peculiarity in the Cobra is the expansion of the neck, popularly called the hood. This phenomenon is attributable, not only to the skin and muscles, but to the skeleton. About twenty pairs of the ribs of the neck and fore part of the back are flat instead of curved, and increase gradually from the head to the eleventh or twelfth pair, from which they decrease until they are merged into the ordinary curved ribs of the body. When the Snake is excited, it brings these ribs forward so as to spread the skin, and then displays the oval hood to best advantage. In this species, the back of the hood is ornamented with two large eye-like spots, united by a curved black stripe, so formed that the whole mark bears a singular resemblance to a pair of spectacles.
Précis
Victorian naturalist JG Wood explained that the cobra’s hood is not a flap of skin, but an extension of the snake’s ribs, which flatten out near the head and can be tensed to flare like a fan. The back of this hood has two black spots on it, joined by a v-shaped line, creating the startling impression of spectacled eyes.
(60 / 60 words)
Victorian naturalist JG Wood explained that the cobra’s hood is not a flap of skin, but an extension of the snake’s ribs, which flatten out near the head and can be tensed to flare like a fan. The back of this hood has two black spots on it, joined by a v-shaped line, creating the startling impression of spectacled eyes.
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