276 . SNAKES. 



in the history of rattlesnakes. Merchants in those days were 

 not F.Z.S.'s ; and it is probable that he thought of nothing 

 beyond ingratiating himself with the members of a learned 

 Society by presenting them with a 'serpente' dead, whose 

 ' Bell ' had excited their curiosity when living ; and he little 

 dreamed that the origin and use of this strange bell would 

 not be determined two hundred years afterwards. 



Says Dr. Tyson : ' I find the inward parts so conformable 

 to those of a Viper that I have taken the liberty of placing 

 it in that Classe and (since it has not that I know of any Latine 

 Name) of giving it that of Vipej^a Caudisoiia : for as I am 

 informed by Merchants 'tis Viviparous, and the Epithet 

 sufficiently differences it from those that have no Rattle.' 



This scholarly anatomist had evidently devoted much 

 careful labour to the task of hunting up all the literature that 

 could throw any light on his much-prized specimen. He 

 had no doubt been one of those ' animated ' by the Florentine 

 savants, and had made himself acquainted with all the viperine 

 characters. He had doubtless read all that had already 

 appeared in the Philosophical Transactions, and also the 

 narratives of such voyagcurs as Hakluyt, Hernandez, Piso, 

 and Marcgravius. 



Among the useful results of his researches he is able to 

 give us many, we may say most, of its vernaculars in the 

 countries of the New World settled by Europeans up to that 

 date ; and as in subsequent books of travel we hear of the 

 rattlesnake frequently under these vernaculars, until, as of 

 later years, its ordinary English name has been familiar to all, 

 we have had a good deal to thank him for, were it only this. 

 . In addition to the authors already named, he gives us 



