RHINOSTOMA COCCINEA. 127 
Dimensions. Length of head, 6 lines; breadth of head, 6 lines; length of body, 
17 inches; length of tail, 3 inches: total length, 24 inches. 
Hasirs. The Scarlet Snake is very timid, and lives most of its time in 
concealment; seldom does it move abroad unless disturbed, or in search of its 
food, which is the various kinds of crickets, grasshoppers, We. 
Geocrapuican Distrisution. The range of the Rhinostoma coccinea is very 
limited. As yet I can only give, with certainty, from lat. 34°, in the Atlantic 
states, to the Gulf of Mexico. 
GeneraL Remarks. The first account of this serpent.may be seen in 
Lichtenstein and Voigt’s Magazin;* it is very accurate, and was furnished by 
Blumenbach. Gmelin copied it in his edition of the Systema Nature of Linneus, 
and Dr. Garden is given as authority for the locality of the animal. 
y 
Daudin next gave not only a full and accurate description of the Rhinostoma 
coccinea, but he accompanied it with an excellent figure. The “Couleuvre 
écarlate” (Scarlet Snake) of Bosct is quite another animal, doubtless the 
Calamaria elapsoidea, as both his description, as well as his plate, represent it 
as entirely surrounded with black bands, while in the Rhinostoma coccinea 
the whole abdomen is of beautiful silver-white. 
I cannot, by any means, agree with Schlegel, the distinguished ophidiologist, in 
placing this serpent among the Heterodontes, because it differs from them in so 
many particulars. The Rhinostoma has the head small, short, and not dilatable 
at will. In the Heterodon it is broad, flat, triangular and dilatable. In one 
the body is sub-cylindrical, and always of the same size; in the other it is always 
more or less depressed, and can be flattened extremely. 
* Vol. v. p. 10. + Nouv. Dict. d’Hist. Nat., tom. xiii. p. 267, pl. xxxiii. fig. 3. 
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