THE CROTALID.E, 385 



tort, porter a croire que ces especes font die bndt avec leur 

 qiteiie : elle indiqiie seuleineiit leur rapports avec les crotales 

 e tab lis d'apres la presence des fausses narines oil fosse ttes dont 

 nous venous de parler. On noninie quelquefois ces Ophidic ns 

 Bothrops! 1 . . . ' Comnie ce caractere conviendrait a tons les 

 Crotaliens parccqu'ils ont tons des fossettes dites lacrymales, 

 ce 7tom {Bothrops) dev lent par consequent trop general! "^ 



In retaining Bothrops as a generic distinction, a large 

 number of non-venomous and constricting serpents must 

 have been included, which probably induced Wagler's op- 

 posers to say of him that he ' created a system in which the 

 venomous and non-venomous were huddled together pell 

 mell.' 



Thus we see that on account of the nasal fosse the Indian 

 crotaline snakes could not be true vipers ; they could not 

 be exclusively BothropJiidce, for the reasons given above, 

 and they certainly are not rattlesnakes ; but for want of a 

 better name they are ' CrotalidcEl as they have (minus the 

 rattle) more features in common with rattlesnakes than with 

 any others. 



In the slough of a rattlesnake you may see the form of 

 this pit. It is lined with scales, and reversed in sloughing, 

 perfectly shaped as a tiny glove finger. 



When Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S., etc., edited a short-lived 

 little magazine in 183 1 called the Zoological Miscellany, \}iVQ. 

 whole of the known Crotalidce consisted of ten genera and 

 thirty species, of which sixteen species belonged to Asia and 

 its adjacent islands, one to South Africa, and the rest to 

 America. When he published his catalogue of snakes 



^ Erpetologie generate, tome 7, p. 1367. ^ Ibid, p. 1 503, 



2 B 



