THE VIPER, OR ADDER. 73 



the reptile, and the supply of poison with which it 

 is furnished."* In the bite there are two punctures 

 corresponding to the poison-fangs. 



It has been taken for granted that the bite of the 

 Viper proves fatal in this country, without perhaps a 

 knowledge of instances in which it so terminated. 

 Professor Bell declares that he had never seen a case 

 which terminated in death, nor had he been able to 

 trace to an authentic source any of the numerous 

 reports of such a termination which have at various 

 times been confidently promulgated.t Nevertheless, 

 so recently as the present summer (1865), a case was 

 reported in the papers, in which a woman was bitten 

 in Epping Forest, and shortly afterwards died : and 

 we know that in France and other continental 

 countries many instances are recorded. Bedard, in 

 his lectures, relates a case of a young man in the 

 neighbourhood of Angers, who, falling down in a 

 meadow, was bitten by a viper in several places, and 

 died in consequence in a few hours. Matthiole re- 

 cords an instance in which a countryman falling 

 down in a meadow happened to divide one of these 

 reptiles in the middle ; he seized the portion of the 

 trunk to which the head was attached, in an awkward 

 manner, and was in consequence bitten in the finger, 

 and died from the effects of the wound. It should 



*M. Moquin-Tandon's " Zoologie Medicale." 

 f Bell's "British Reptiles," p. 59. 



