162 



These few remarks are written simiily to point out, should we meet with 

 these animals on another excursion to a wild district, that there is really no 

 difficulty in distinguishing between them, and that a very moderate examination 

 of either will be sufficient to convince any one as to which of the three classes 

 of British serpents it may belong. 



Mr. Rankin said that the amphibious powers of snakes depended on their 

 possessing hearts of single action, that is with only two cavities. There was 

 no separate respiratory circulation, tl^£ change in the blood being much less 

 than is usually required by land animals. 



Mr. Houghton said that the Coronella Icevis had been recently captured 

 again in England, and was now an admitted British snake. With regard to 

 both the Blindworm and the Viper being viviparous, they were ovoviviparous, 

 the eggs being hatched as they are brought forth, and if either were killed and 

 opened just as they were fit to hatch, the inclosing membrane would be found so 

 thin and transparent and fitting so closely the young snakes that it might readily 

 escape observation. That eels brought forth their young alive was an old 

 error. They offer no exception certainly to the rule, " omne vivnm ex ovo," 

 since they spawn regularly, and those who have thought they have seen young 

 eels inside old ones have been mislead by the presence of entozoa with which 

 they axe sometimes affected. 



Dr. Bull said they were much obliged to Blr. Phillipps for the trouble he 

 had taken in drawing theii- attention to the differences between tlie Snakes in 

 so interesting a manner. He conld not help regretting that the young snake he 

 had captui-ed had been allowed to escape. He was quite sui-e it was not a 

 Viper, although it resembled one so closely that Mr. Phillipps, knowing them 

 as he does, evidently tliinks still that it was one. He had, however, opened 

 its mouth carefully as he held it by the neck, and looked for the poison fangs 

 in vain, and had they been there he must have seen them. Now, he had since 

 seen the Ctyrondla Iccvis, mentioned by Mr. Frank Buckland in " Land and 

 Water," as "that curious, nonpoisonous, but'yet Viper-like snake," and he 

 rather regi-etted the mercy that its innocency had obtained for the little one he 

 had caught, since if it had turned out to be the Coronella hevis it would have 

 been a most interesting discovery. There are at present but three British 

 Ipcalitiesjknown for it — one is "the New Forest," another on " the heaths which 

 lie between the river Stoui* and the sea," and the third, where it exists pretty 

 plentifully, is on " the heaths near Poole." 



Mr. Buckland sent White, the professional Viper catcher, into the New 

 Forest, and in a week he returned with a bag full of snakes. " I took him into 

 an empty barrack-room," he says, "and we shook out the snakes. There were 

 twenty -two Vipers, four common Snakes, and one Coronella, which, to my delight, 

 pitcrwards gave birth to several young ones." The Coronellas live upon lizards. 



