of Sciences of ike Inslilute of France. 34 1 



perhaps ui point of natural productions, is more connected with 

 Asia. The two hemispheres are thus divided longitudinally into 

 two zones, eastern and western. 



The attention of all Paris has been recently directed to a wo- 

 man from the Cape of Good Hope, who has been exhibited to 

 the public under the name of the Hottentot Venus. She be- 

 longed to a nation in the interior of Africa celebrated among the 

 colonists of the Cape for their ferocity. The shortness of their 

 stature, and especially the enormous projection of the buttocks in 

 the woman, seem to mark them out as a race quite distinct from 

 the Negroes and Caflfres by whom they are surrounded. Much 

 has been also said of the aprons of these females. By earlier 

 travellers they have been represented very inaccurately, and more 

 recent ones have ventured even to deny their existence. 



The individual alluded to having died at Paris, M, Cuvier had 

 occasion to dissect her, and to establish the particularities of her 

 organization. She possessed the apron: but this was neither an 

 overfolding of the skin of the belly, nor a particular organ ; but 

 a considerable protrusion of the superior part of the nymphse, 

 which fell before the opening of the matrice and covered it en- 

 tirely. The prominences of the buttocks consisted of a cellular 

 tissue filled with fat similar to the bumps of the camel and dro- 

 medary. The head displayed a singular mixture of the charac- 

 teristics of the Negro and the Calmuck; and the bones of the 

 arms, remarkable for their slenderness, presented some remote 

 affinities to those of certain species of the monkey tribe. 



One of the most formidable of the venomous tribe next to the 

 rattle- snake is the yellow viper, ox fer-de-laiice of Martinique 

 and St. Lucia, upon which M. Moreau de Jonnes has communi- 

 cated a very interesting memoir to the Academy. Naturalists 

 place it at present among the genus trigonocephali. It abounds 

 in all the principal colonies of France. Some pretend that it 

 was originally transported there out of hatred to the Carribs, by 

 a people on the borders of the Oroonoko ; a tradition which may 

 perhaps explain why it remains a stranger to tbe rest of the 

 Antilles. From the borders of the sea to the summit of t!;e 

 mountains the inhabitants are exposed to its attacks ; but its 

 principal retreat is in the fields of sugar-cane, where the great 

 abundance of rats affords it a plentiful subsistence, and where it 

 propagates with an increase proportioned to the number of its 

 young, of which it has generally from fifteen to sixteen at a birth. 

 It sometimes exceeds six feet in length. Attempts have been 

 made, but in vain, to destroy these vipers by means of terrier 

 dogs, of English breed. M. .lonnes proposes to employ against 

 them the bird of prey called messager or secretaire (falco ser- 

 pciilarius of Liuuaius), which is so celebrated for devouring ser- 



Y 3 pcnts 



