210 SNAKES. 



' Evidently an oversight. Manifestly impossible,' that 

 learned authority at once decided. (As Schlegel stands 

 high as a scientific ophiologlst, the misprint is pointed out 

 for the benefit of future students.) 



Thus lengths, as to the number of vertebrcBy vary in species 

 of the same genus, but not in 'individuals of the same 

 species.' And this alone is sufficiently perplexing. 



For example, we read in one work that a rattlesnake 

 has 194 vertebrae, and in another that 'it,' viz. 'a rattle- 

 snake,' has 207 vertebrae. Both equally correct, because 

 two distinct species are described. Again, Dr. Carpenter, 

 in his Animal Physiology (edition of 1872), gives a table of 

 the vertebrae of various animals, in which * a python ' has 

 422 joints, while Owen gives 'a python' 291 joints, each 

 learned anatomist having examined a different species. By 

 these facts we comprehend what Schlegel intended to say. 



The little constrictors caught their finches with five feet 

 of body at their disposal. An anaconda, with five yards 

 of body to work with, might with equal ease coil three 

 opossums. 



* The skeleton of a snake exhibits the greatest possible 

 simplicity to which a vertebrate animal can be reduced,' 

 says Roget. It is ' merely a lengthened spinal column.' 

 It is ' simple ' in the same way that botanists call a stem 

 simple when it has no branches, or bracts, or leaves, to 

 interrupt its uniformity. For this reason, having no limbs, 

 and therefore none of those bones which in quadrupeds 

 connect the limbs to the trunk, the spine is, in unscientific 

 language, alike all the way down ; ' iin corps tout en tronc! 

 And because those two first joints of the spine which have 



