68 VIPERA) A. 
is much legs easily disturbed, and more tardy of flight than 
the male. The number of young produced at each birth 
varies from twelve to twenty, or even more. 
There are on record numerous statements of various 
degrees of credibility, of the curious fact that the female 
Viper allows her young ones to retreat into her stomach 
for safety when alarmed by any sudden danger. These 
statements generally declare that the mother, on the oceur- 
rence of any such emergency, opens her mouth, and that 
the young immediately enter it, and pass into the stomach, 
where they remain protected until the danger be passed, 
or the Viper has gained a place of safety ; it is added, in 
many cases, that, on killing the mother, the young have 
been found within the stomach, and on being liberated 
have at once reassumed all their former activity. The 
question has been reopened of late by the publication of 
several communications in a most respectable periodical, 
to which the reader is referred.* It will be observed, 
that with one exception, the writers have given their 
statements only on hearsay; and that in the one case 
which is given from personal observation, the circumstance 
is stated to have occurred when the writer was a boy. 
The first impression made on the mind of one accustomed 
to compare evidence with probability, and to weigh the 
value of assertions by the rules of analogy, is that the mis- 
take, if it be one, may have arisen from the viviparous 
character of the animal; but the opinion is so general, the 
mass of evidence so considerable, and the details in many 
cases so minute, as scarcely to allow of the question being 
thus summarily disposed of; and in this state of doubt 
upon so interesting a subject, it is perhaps better to await 
* See several numbers of the Gardeners’ Chronicle, in April, 1848, &c. 
