370 SiVAKES. 



the Maxilla' (meaning the reserve fangs), ' but at Pleasure 

 when alive they could raise them to do Execution with, not 

 unlike as a Lyon or a Cat does its Claws.' ^ 



He found seven reserve fangs on each side ; and though 

 they were not, as he tells us, ' fastened to any bone,' the 

 illustration represents them growing in regular order 

 according to size in the jaw. 



In another paper read before the Royal Society in 1726, also 

 anterior to Fontana, on the * Fangs of the Rattlesnake,' the 

 writer. Captain Hall, describes the dissection, which was 

 under the direction of Sir Hans Sloane ; and 'then the 

 Muscles that raise the poisonous Fangs appear.' This 

 anatomist also found reserve fangs. * Putting by this 

 Membrane, the fatal Fangs appear, which on first 

 View seemed only one on each Side, till searching further 

 there appeared four more. The first and largest is 

 fixed in a Bone ; ' four others were loose in the mem- 

 brane.- 



Several of the old authors quoted in the chapter on 

 Rattlesnake History of the Seventeenth Century were quite 

 aware of the action of the ' Springing Teeth,' ' Master Teeth,' 

 or ' Canine Teeth,' as the fangs were variously called ; and 

 Law^son, 1707, describes 'the Teeth w^hich poison are two on 

 each side of the Upper Jaws. These are bent like a Sickle, 

 and hang loose as if by a Joint.' Fontana's observations 

 were possibly of greater scientific importance, otherwise it is 

 singular that his equally thoughtful predecessors, from whom 



^ Paper on the ' Vipera Caudisona,' by Ed. Tyson, M.D,, Philosophical 

 Transactions, vol. xiii. p. 25. 1683. 

 ^Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxxiv. p. 309. 1726. 



