VI FERINE FANGS. 371 



he no doubt culled much important information, should have 

 been overlooked. 



In these viperine fangs there is an analogy between the 

 vipers and the lophius, a fish with moveable teeth ; only in 

 the fish, as Owen tells us, the action is not volitional, — the 

 teeth bend back to admit food, and then by elastic muscles 

 spring up again to retain it. 



The true nature of the reserve fangs was surmised by 

 Mr. John Bartram, who in 1734 wrote from German Town, 

 in the American colonies, to a F.R.S., 'On a Cluster of 

 Small Teeth at the Root of each Fang or Great Tooth.' ^ 

 He had a rattlesnake, 'now a Rarity near our Settlements,' 

 and dissected it, when he ' found in the Head what has not 

 been observed before by any that I can remember ; i.e. a 

 Cluster of Teeth on each side of the Upper Jaw at the 

 Root of the Great Fangs through which the Poison is 

 ejected. In the same Case that the two main Teeth were 

 sheathed in, lay four others at the Root of each Tooth in a 

 Cluster of the same Shape and Figure as the great ones, 

 and I am apt to think for the same Use and Purposes, if 

 by an Accident the main Teeth happen to be broken. 

 May not these be placed to supply a Defect successively, 

 for the Support of this Creature ? ' 



Mr. Bartram was singularly correct in his diffidently- 

 offered surmises ; nor is it likely that in such a remote 

 district as German Town then was, he had ready access 

 to foreign publications, or would have claimed originality 

 had he been cognisant of the work of M. Moyse Charas, 

 Nciv Experiments upon Vipers, translated from the original 



1 riiilosophical Transactions, vol. xxxviii. I733-34- 



