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pents which have them, whether they are to be con- 

 sidered as principally intended lor killing the prey 

 on which the animals i'eed, or for defences against 

 llicir enemies. Some have thought that they are 

 principally of a defensive character, but this is con- 

 trary to the general analogy of nature, and also to 

 the appearances of the particular case. Poisonous 

 serpents are all, without exception, carnivorous ; and, 

 according to the accounts, which, though they may 

 be exaggerated in many points, are surely not wholly 

 fictitious, their prey is much more alarmed at their 

 appearance than the prey of other serpents more 

 powerfully armed in the way of teeth, and also of 

 greater activity. But it is a pretty general law of 

 nature that no carnivorous animal is furnished with 

 any organs, the primary use of which is that of de- 

 fences, or even weapons of war : talon, teeth, or fang, 

 whatever the weapon may be, its leading use is 

 always of a predatory character, and the grand pur- 

 pose which it. serves is invariably the feeding of the 

 animals. No doubt such animals do use their wea- 

 pons in warfare, both on the defensive and in the 

 offensive ; but this is a secondary use of them, not 

 essential in the economy of the animals, and not re- 

 sorted to for any occasion, unless it is absolutely 

 necessary. The animals which have defences that 

 are not of essential use, or of any use to them in their 

 feeding, are animals which are preyed upon, and not 

 preycrs. In most of them too their weapons are 

 used more against their own species than against 

 enemies. The males of almost all the horned animals 

 fight with each other in the rutting season ; and in 

 the elephant the tusks are not. even the grand means 

 of vanquishing an enemy. Making a lurch on the 

 enemy, shaking him oft' by the action of the subcuta- 

 neous muscles, and trampling him to death after his 

 fall, are the chief modes of defence with the elephant. 



But if animals which, both from their nature and 

 their haunts, are very much exposed to enemies, 

 have not defences absolutely for their protection, 

 why should we suppose that these should be given 

 to rattlesnakes and other poisonous serpents ? From 

 their haunts and their habits, they are among the 

 animals that have the least chance of annoyance 

 from any enemy save man. The greater part of 

 their time is spent in the fastnesses of bushes, brakes, 

 and other covers, where enemies are not very likely 

 to reach them ; it being understood that birds, and 

 not mammalia, are the principal enemies of the 

 serpent tribe. The idea that the deadly fangs of 

 these animals are defences must therefore be aban- 

 doned, and they must be considered as conducing to 

 the more humble purpose of enabling them to eat 

 their dinners, which are few and far between. 



It must not be supposed that this is a piece of 

 merely gratuitous criticism on a subject of no great 

 importance in itself, for really it involves the subject 

 of a very mischievous tendency in the study of 

 natural history. The error lies in this, that there are 

 really " weapons of war," created purposely in nature ; 

 and this being once admitted, it follows, of course, 

 that war is a part, and a necessary part, of creation, 

 and that, as such, it is not only unavoidable, but 

 natural. Now, no doctrine can be more false or 

 more mischievous than this. For there are no evils 

 in nature ; and war is not only an evil, but the very 

 worst of evils ; and therefore war is not a part of the 

 law of nature ; it is a direct breach of that law. No 

 animal but man engages in war as a trade, though 



animals do fight ; and man engages in it only in con- 

 sequence of having' broken the law of nature (as 

 given to him), and become wicked. 



The use of weapons against their own species, 

 which we find in various animals, though it does not 

 in any way conduce to the feeding of the individual, 

 as the use of the weapons of predatory animals always 

 does in their natural and original exercise, must not 

 be supposed to conduce nothing to the advantage of 

 the species. It is the males of such animals that 

 are pugnacious ; and it will be found that the very 

 pugnacious ones are invariably polygamic. The 

 purposes of it seems to be the preserving of the race 

 in the very best condition as to the size, strength, 

 and vigour of the successive generations. We know 

 that, in the case of hybrid animals, the form, the 

 size, and the strength, follow after the male parent ; 

 and the breeders of domestic animals know this to be 

 the fact, and rest upon it with practical advantage. 

 It is by proper attention to the males that the breeds 

 of our domestic animals have been so much improved 

 since breeding became a science. On the other 

 hand, where no attention has been paid to the good 

 properties of the males, the breed has become sta- 

 tionary, and in many cases degenerated. The pug- 

 nacity in wild nature, in consequence of which the 

 more powerful male drives off all the more feeble 

 ones, appears to answer, in wild nature, merely the 

 same purpose as the skill and attention of the breeder 

 answers in art. Such wrong notions of the use of 

 organs, as that which we have been endeavouring to 

 expose, tend greatly to spoil the useful information 

 which we can so copiously obtain from the rational 

 study of animated nature. 



The poison is very much of the consistence of a 

 solution of gum, to which substance it bears a resem- 

 blance in its general properties ; but whether the 

 poisonous nature of it is owing to the presence of a 

 poisoning ingredient, or arises from the mere compo- 

 sition of the entire substance, it is not easy to say, 

 though we know that (here are some chemical com- 

 pounds which are quite harmless when the several 

 ingredients are in one proportion to each other, and 

 deadly poisons when that proportion is different. 

 The virulence of their action,however,is not destroyed 

 by their being dried, which is a proof that the deadly 

 part is diluted in order that it may flow more easily 

 along the duct and the fang. It might therefore be 

 used to poison weapons, in the same way that com- 

 pound poisons are used by the inhabitants of warm 

 countries. In the vegetable poisons it is now gene- 

 rally understood that the deadly part is an alkali, 

 and it is possible, but not hitherto fully established, 

 that the same may be the case with the animal 

 po'sons. 



Whether the coincidence is accidental or not we 

 pretend not to say ; but it is a coincidence worthy 

 of remark, that the places of the world in which the 

 inhabitants are most in the habit of poisoning their 

 weapons both for the chase and for war, are also 

 those in which the poison of serpents is the most 

 deadly, and the vegetable poisons the most nume- 

 rous and virulent. The rich and warm parts of 

 tropical America, and the oriental isles, are the re- 

 markable places for all the three ; and we believe 

 there are few places containing naturally a very poi- 

 sonous reptile in which a poisonous plant may not 

 also be found. 



Poisonous serpents vary in their deadliness with 



