36 TRIGONOCEPHALUS PISCIVORUS. 
the character of his new visiters, and became perfectly quiet. Indeed I have often 
received four or five of these animals in safety, after their having peaceably 
travelled together a journey of fifty miles in the same box. The dread of the 
fatal Water Moccasin has brought into suspicion several other snakes that live in 
the same localities, as the Tropidonotus fasciatus, ‘Tropidonotus erythrogaster, 
&c., which are not only harmless, but really useful in destroying vermin. 
The food of the Water Moccasin is such fish as he can overtake, and few 
exceed his velocity in swimming; and whatever smaller reptiles, as frogs, toads, 
tadpoles, &c. that fall in his way. 
GeocrapuicaL Distrisution. The northern limit of the Trigonocephalus pis- 
civorus must, for the present, be set down as the Pedee river in North Carolina; 
as to the southern and western, nothing positive can be said, only that the range 
is extensive; I have received specimens from the Floridas, Alabama, and from the 
banks of the Mississippi, and have no doubt that they may be found for a certain 
distance up the tributaries of this great river, as Professor Troost has observed 
them in Tennessee. 
GenerRAL Remarks. This animal was certainly first made known to naturalists 
by Catesby, who calls it the Water Viper, and adds, that it is commonly called in 
Carolina “the Water-Rattle; not that it hath a rattle, but because many are as 
large, and coloured not unlike the Rattlesnake, and their bite is considered as 
fatal.” Lacépéde placed it among the Crotali, but improperly, as it is without 
rattles, which are the distinctive characters of that genus; their place is supplied 
in this by a small horny point, about half an inch in length. This excrescence, 
though perfectly harmless, has, as Catesby says, “been considered of dreadful 
efficacy by the credulous vulgar, not only to kill men and other animals, but even 
to destroy plants and trees.” 
This is doubtless the Trigonocephalus tisiphone of Cuvier, as he first refers to 
Plate xlii., of Catesby, which is certainly the Trigonocephalus piscivorus, or 
