, 1892-02-04


In South America we heal the story Of
the snake with the sting in his tail. He is
said to be more deadly than any other on
account of this double armament. OF
course this is not true, but still there is in
1t a little truth-just enough to flavor the
falsehood. Over all the billy and rolling
forest lands of South America from PAN
anna to Brazil there is found that largest
of all deadly snakes, the bushmaster. He
is unique in the serpent world on account
of the popularity of his scales. Every
scale is raised into a little knob exactly
like the protuberances on the rough sur
face of a pineapple. Hence he is called in
Venezuela "Coaima de pima" or pineapple
viper.
Among the Creoles of Trinidad, the only
West Indian island where he exists, he has
the title of "Mapepi Zanana," which has
the same meaning. Toward the end of his
tail each scale is prolonged into a little
spine, increasing in length to the last or
NINA one, which is many times longer
than the Others, and in full grown speci-
mems varies from a half to three-quarters
of an inch in length. This spine is entirely
innocent of poison and never brought into
use either for offensive or defensive pur-
poses. The propensity of the ignorant to
associate the ideas of venom and malignity
~confusedly with everything belonging to
snakes has transformed this harmless
caudal ornament into an of
vengeance and death. This, without doubt,
gives rise to the story of the snake with the
sting in his tail, a needless exaggeration of
the powers of this largest of all deadly
snakes. A few years ago one was killed at
TOGO, in Trinidad, which measured 13L
feet.
That a snake can spit in the human sense
of the word is utterly impossible, as any one
may see who will examine the mechanism
of the morUh. There is a muscular action
implied in the word spit which forbids our
using it when speaking of any effort that a
snake can make; for in reptiles the lips
have no muscular power independent of
the bony framework to which they are at
tached. Nevertheless, it is true that there
are snakes which can eject venom into the
eyes of an assailant. There Is a force by
which the poison ordinarily injected into
the wounds made By the fangs may be
instead squirted into the eyes of a human
being or animal approaching too closely or
prying too curiously into the face of an
alarmed serpent, and that force is the
pressure exerted on the poison glands in
the act of striking. But this must have
rarely If ever happened in America, as the
curvature Of the fangs in American deadly
snakes almost precludes such a possibility.
But with the Indian and African cobra
and their relatives such n thing is not only
possible but easy.
In the rattlesnake, the copperhead, the
moccasin, and in fact in all yipers both of
the Old and New World, the fangs are only
erect when the mouth is open, and even
then they are so curved downward and
the aperture by which the venom makes
its exit comes out at such an acute angle
with the point of the fang that ever if the
deadly fluid were elected through it its
course would be rather horizontal. or even
downward, so that it would not reach the
eyes of a mar standing upright. With the
genus Maize, however, it is far otherwise.
1t must be understood that to this and
some allied genera belong all the famous
and terrible snakes of Africa and India,
known generally under the name of cobra
In these the secretion of venom is perhaps
more abundant, but there are peculiarities
connected with their fang arrangement and
method of striking.
AS an example of American poison
snakes take the rattlesnake, and of the