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dener called it a "tamaga" and told us it was very deadly, 

 as poisonous as the coral snake. If this were so, it seemed to 

 us at the time, that this snake must chew and not strike. 

 The head and fore part of the body were brought back to 

 the United States and identified as Leptodira albofusca, 

 widely distributed throughout tropical America, It has a 

 pair of enlarged grooved teeth behind the other maxillary 

 teeth, and the groove, on the front of each tooth, "con- 

 ducts the secretion of the enlarged upper labial glands." 

 Leptodira is a member of the subfamily Dipsadomorphinae, 

 one of the divisions of the Opisthoglyph Colubridae. Of 

 the Opisthoglypha, Dr. Gadow says (in the Cambridge 

 Natural History) : "Apparently all these snakes are more 

 or less poisonous, paralyzing their prey before or during the 

 act of deglutition. So far as man is concerned they are 

 rather harmless, since the poison is not very strong, not 

 available in large quantities, and above all because the 

 small poison-teeth stand so far back that the snake cannot 

 easily inflict wounds with them. The Opisthoglypha are 

 of considerable morphological interest, since they connect 

 the Colubridae with the Viperidae, the characteristic poison- 

 ous apparatus of which seems to have been derived from 

 that of the Opisthoglypha by the reduction or shortening 

 of the anterior portion of the maxillaries and the harmless 

 teeth, so that the posterior or poison-fangs come to the 

 front." 



The second of our bromeliad snakes escaped unhurt. 

 Both were very sluggish with eyes filmed over and, we sus- 

 pected, were about to moult. 



On November 18 we investigated some bromeliads on 

 two trees that had just been cut down and were lying on the 

 ground, practically untouched, in the potrero west of the 

 stable of La Emilia, A peon cut off eight or ten of these 

 epiphytes for us with his machete, when I examined them, 



