442 Alleged affinity of Pigeons with Poultry. 



not hesitate in yielding implicit credence to the fact. One man 

 particularly, on whose word I fully rely, tells me that he has 

 himself seen as many as thirteen young vipers thus enter the 

 mouth of their parent, which he afterwards killed and opened, 

 for the purpose of counting them. The following extract 

 shows that the habit is common to other venomous Serpentidae; 

 all which, I believe, are, without exception, ovo-viviparous. 

 It is stated of the rattlesnake, in Hunter's Memoirs of a 

 Captivity among the North American Indians, that, " when, 

 alarmed, the young ones, which are generally eight or ten in 

 number, retreat into the mouth of the parent, and reappear 

 on its giving a contractile muscular token that the danger is 

 past/' The same writer says, of the fascinating power of 

 the rattlesnake, that, " whenever they fix their piercing eyes 

 on a bird, squirrel, &c, they commence and keep up an in- 

 cessant rattling noise, until the animal, convulsed by fear, 

 approaches within the reach of its formidable enemy. This, 

 however, is not always the result ; for I have repeatedly seen 

 animals thus agitated, and in imminent danger, make their 

 escape without any intervention in their favour, except the 

 recovery of their own powers." 



I have dissected a female viper, of which the ground colour 

 was rather darker than in the male, that was found to contain 

 excluded young, three only in number. The parent was of 

 moderate, but not particularly small, size, though I cannot 

 now state its exact dimensions. I believe that they become 

 darker towards the time of parturition. The largest speci- 

 men which I have ever yet obtained was a scaly one, measur- 

 ing 2 ft. 3 in. — Id. 



On certain alleged Tokens of Affinity which have been held to 

 connect the Pigeons with the Poultry. — It has been stated, 

 that the large Nicobar pigeon, and its immediate allies, re- 

 semble the true poultry in the circumstance of producing 

 numerous eggs upon the ground ; the young following their 

 parent upon exclusion, and picking up their own food, like 

 young partridges. In what degree, however, the following 

 fact tends to cast a doubt upon all this, I leave the reader to 

 determine. I learned, the other day, at the Zoological Gar- 

 dens, that an unimpregnated female produced two eggs (mark 

 the number), and not on the ground, but in a box at the 

 elevation of several feet ! 



On the other hand, it has been held that the Pterocles 

 genus, with their long pointed wings, manifest also a further 

 approximation to the pigeons, in the fact of their producing 

 but few young at a time, which are hatched helpless, and fed 

 for some time by their parents. Now, if it can be shown 



