ee ee ae 
\ 
Fwo-Headed Snakes. 91 
-Lanzoni relates that he had seen such an animal. Francis 
Redi has left a very particular account of one that was 
oe: catched near Pisa, on the bank of the Arno; and which 
lived | from January to February, after it was taken, affording 
= sap aimarie for experiments and remarks. When 
arting, the right head appeared to die seven 
e oases life was 
y's Sours: before the left. Aldrovandus had one in his cabinet 
at Bologna; and there is one in the museum of the king of 
a France, at Paris. 
or further intelligence on this curious and controverted 
oe _ Subject, | refer to the Count La Cepede’s able disquisition, 
(D V. 
rpens monstreux,) on Serpentine monsters, (Vol. 
pp- 311—326 of the e copy I had the honour to receive from 
me wherein, like a sagacious reasoner, he decides the 
se productions to be anomalies 
_ A two-headed serpent. is figured, in ‘ovens! views, by 
George Edwards in the fourth volume of his history of birds, 
plate 207, and described. The drawings are of the natural 
magnitude. - He intrudes the subject by observing that he 
did not propose to exhibit monsters in his work, but that the 
species, even if it had not two heads, might be better known 
to the learned world. He mentions an English serpent, 
that had been biome ht to him, with two aioe heads. The 
specimen he describes was from Barbadoe 
The other sdiislliaomce touching this ‘oasing has been 
so fully and peetty posted up by Mr. President Clinton, in 
the note FF, subjoined to the discourse he delivered before 
- the New-York Latctary and Philosophical Society, in 1814, 
and published in the transactions of that learned body, (Vol. 
Il. pp. 160—162.) that I avoid the transcription of his 
Juminous statement. 
rom the facts stated, and the references made, it ap- 
pears that two- headed snakes have been found in the West- 
Indian and Polynesian Isles, -in Great Britain, in Italy, and 
im the state of New-York. An inference arising naturally 
from the ‘premises is, that they are wndividuals of differes uf 
species, and probably of different. genera; inasmuch as it is 
very unlikely that the two- headed ss of remote siitua- 
tions’ on the continents, and more distant localities on the 
islands, were the issue of the North American, or New- 
York Black-Snake. This conclusion is fatal to the suppo- 
sition, that these singular productions constitute a race of 
their own, and propagate their kind in regular succession. 
