1902 Reptile Studies 26 



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fectly mature, and would have been expelled immediately had the 

 animal been put into the warm sun. The viper certainly contained 

 five living young, but they had not yet been born. 



Of course, such specimens can in no way be entitled to a re- 

 ward ; there must be thousands of them to be obtained at the 

 present time. The vipers are seen lying usually on a sunny bank, 

 bringing forth their perfectly mature young, which immediately 

 retreat in the herbage from the observation of observers, who 

 imagine that they go down the throat. 



The dissection of any of these reptiles will prove that there are 

 no young in the throat or gullet of the animal, but that there are a 

 number of eggs in the lower part of the body, in the ovary, ready 

 to be laid. I am perfectly aware that it is a hopeless task to con- 

 vince superficial observers, who have seen young vipers disappear 

 on their approach, that they have not gone down the throat of the 

 mother ; but as no one has yet produced any valid testimony that 

 vipers swallow their young, we may regard the whole matter as 

 being one of the vulgar errors of natural history. The mere dis- 

 section of a viper and the examination of the structure of the 

 oesophagus and the stomach, which is 10 inches from its mouth, 

 would disprove to any one possessed of the slightest anatomical 

 knowledge the possibility of the creature swallowing a number of 

 its young, to say nothing of their returning again from the mouth 

 of the parent. W. B. Tegetmeier. 



It will be observed that in both reports the young are 

 stated to be fully developed, to be surrounded by a con- 

 siderable quantity of opaque albumen, and that the eggs 

 were found in the ovary. Any one possessed of the most 

 elementary knowledge of the process of development knows 

 that such a condition of things is absolutely impossible, and 

 we can only assume that the wording of the report is due 

 to careless diction, and that the writer assumed that the 

 readers would know no better than to believe it. But many 

 people study natural history nowadays, and every student 

 who has attended an elementary course of Zoology is aware 

 that fully developed embryos are never found in an ovary. 

 The physiological function of the ovary is to carry the eggs 

 until they are ready to be fertilised. The eggs are then dis- 

 charged from the ovary, which takes no further part in their 

 development. At this stage the eggs are of course very 

 small. The remaining stages of development in the adder 

 consist in the eggs finding their way into a long tube, called 



