Pat or the Pleistocene?

"The absence of snakes in Ireland," writes a young professor in the current Scientific American, "is the direct outcome of the Pleistocene geography of the British Isles."

Now what kind of a loose statement is that coming from a man named Deevey, and him a redhead, even though he is assistant professor of biology at Yale? The absence of snakes in Ireland, as anyone knows (whether their name just happens to be Kelly, O'Flaherty, Dunne or O'Rourke), is the direct outcome of the fact that 1,500 years ago the good St. Patrick himself stood on a hill in the Galty Mountains and ordered the vipers away.

Into the sea they went that day, every slithering, slimy serpent of them excepting one. "I prefer to coil me great length up and go to sleep," that one told the saint. "I had never a great taste for drowning." "Very good," said Patrick, "then how about coiling yerself in this box here for it is very comfortable." ;' 'Tis not big enough," said the snake. " 'Tis big enough and plenty," said the saint. " 'Tis not," said the snake. "It is," said the saint. "I say it is not," said the snake, and to prove the point he crawled into the box, whereupon St. Patrick clapped down the lid and snapped the lock and that was the end of the last snake in Ireland.

And how does Professor Edward S. Deevey explain it all? Well, says he, during the fourth glacial age the flora and the fauna of England and of Ireland, which at that time were part of the European continent, took the cold and perished. Then the ice melted and the sea rose isolating Ireland and England. Fast moving little hedgehogs, shrews and stoats came galloping from Europe to Ireland across a narrow bridge of land before the sea closed in. As for the slower snakes, they got only as far as England. And that, should the professor be right, was no better than they deserved.

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