42 TRIGONOCEPHALUS CONTORTRIX. 



reference to the Coluber constrictor, of the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae, 

 which is entirely a different animal from that of the twelfth, is very remarkable, 

 as it corresponds with it neither in its character nor habits; of that he says, 

 "maxillaj apex simus triqueter, adoritur homines, circum pedes convolvens, sed 

 innocuus," while this he is desirous to prove a poisonous animal, "caput latum, 

 valdc convexum, sacculos venenatos habet, sed tela non reperi." 



Daudin, from some researches of Palisot de Beauvais, and from his own 

 observations, makes this animal a new genus, Cenchris, saying at the same time 

 that the Hog Nose of Catesby was synonymous with it, and that the Common 

 Hog Nose is the Boa contortrix, in which he was mistaken. There are doubt- 

 less several species of Hog Nose snakes in the country, both at the north and 

 south, but all are widely different from the Boa contortrix of the Systema Naturae. 

 Daudin's description of his Cenchris mokeson is good, and agrees well with the 

 Trigonocephalus contortrix; "body thick; tail short and cylindrical; head large, 

 covered with plates in front and scales behind; jaws with fangs." "The colour 

 of the Cenchris mokeson," he says, "appears, from a drawing done from nature 

 by Peale, the proprietor and director of the Philadelphia Museum, of a reddish- 

 brown; the body and tail marked with fifteen large ti'ansvcrse dark bands; these 

 are narrowest in the centre," (viz: along the vertebral line,) "and are broader and 

 darker at the sides." 



Cuvier is as wrong in referring the Cenchris mokeson of Daudin to the genus 

 Heterodon,* as in saying that Daudin himself knew it only from the figure of the 

 Hog Nose of Catesby, when in fact he had a very fair drawing furnished him by 

 Peale, easily recognised by those acquainted with the animal; and besides this he 

 has given two good figures on the same plate,t one the head of the Hog Nose, 

 and the other the head of his Mokeson, shewing clearly that they belong to very 

 different eenera. 



to^ 



* Regn. Anim., tom. ii. p. 62, note 2. 



t Hist. Nat. des Rept., tom. v. pi. xl., fig. 25, Mokeson; fig. 2S, Hog Nose. 



