4o8 SNAKES. 



included among the DcndrophidcB, or true tree snakes, as 

 they live in trees ; but Dr. Andrew Smith considers that 

 their teeth sufficiently separate them from these. 



That there is something exceedingly interesting to study 

 out in th.t Xenodon family cannot be doubted. 'The transi- 

 tion begun in the Bucephali,' says Owen/ ' is completed 

 in the poisonous serpents/ but where the virulent character 

 of the saliva begins it is hard to say. 



Despairing of any distinct comprehension of a jaw-bone 

 which permits of moveable back teeth, the last resource was 

 to hunt up a skeleton. At the Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons none was to be found ; but through the 

 kindness of the officials at the British Museum, one was at 

 length unearthed from the subterranean labyrinths of un- 

 told treasures there. It was the skull of X. gigas, the 

 largest of the family, and a splendid specimen for examina- 

 tion. There were two large posterior fangs on each side. 

 On one side were two or three more large reserve fangs — a 

 cluster of them. All were recumbent. They were all much 

 larger than that of X. rhabdocephahis, those in reserve vary- 

 ing in size relatively to their development and position. 

 In this specimen there were also two double rows of palate 

 teeth, and an abundant but most disorderly row of simple 

 teeth in the lower jaw, with some reserv^e ones packed 

 closely on the inner side below the row in use. They 

 exactly illustrated the words of Nicholson and others, ' the 

 crop of young teeth everywhere working their way into the 

 intervals of the old ones.' 



In the skulls of LiopJiis meremii and LiopJiis cobella, 



^ Odontography, vol. i. p. 225. 



