VIPER. 



821 



It is said that there are some suffrutescent violets 

 in intertropical countries which have not yet been 

 introduced into this country; but all the hardy sorts 

 have been long admitted in the flower-garden for 

 placing on rock-work and shady borders. The 

 V. tricolor is now cultivated under the name of pan- 

 sies, or heartsease, most extensively by professional 

 florists, who have originated numerous varieties, ex- 

 celling in size, colour, and variety, all that were 

 before known. They are all readily increased by 

 parting the root, or by seed. 



VIPER (Vipera). A genus or rather family of poi- 

 sonous serpents, having poison fangs unaccompanied 

 by other teeth. They occupy the same place in the 

 eastern continent that the Crotali (rattlesnakes and 

 triangular-headed snakes) occupy in America, and 

 with them include the whole of the land Ophidi 

 which have poison fangs ; the other poisonous ser- 

 pents have common teeth along with their poison 

 fangs, and are all aquatic in their habits, constituting 

 what is called the Hydra family. 



The vipers of the eastern continent are more nu- 

 merous and varied in their species than the Crotali of 

 the western ; but taking them on the whole, they 

 are not so formidable in their appearance or so deadly 

 in their venom. There are, however, exceptions to 

 this, depending partly on the species and partly on 

 the warmth of the climate and the season ; and in 

 those extreme cases wounds inflicted by any small 

 ones are attended with the most fatal consequences. 



The vipers occupy the same place, both in the system 

 and on the globe, among the poisonous serpents, which 

 is occupied by the colubers, amons; the true serpents 

 which are not poisonous ; and as they have the plates 

 under the tail double as well as the colubers, they 

 have been confounded together, and the poison of 

 the vipers has been imputed to the others which are 

 certainly not poisonous. This confusion of two 

 sections of animals so very different, as those are in 

 the character which gives them their chief interest 

 with mankind, has often been productive of double 

 mistakes. The harmless colubers have been perse- 

 cuted as if in possession of deadly venom, and people 

 have been terrified at them ; on the oilier hand, 

 some have, from experience of the harmless nature 

 of the colubers, been led to tamper with the adders, 

 and have paid dearly for their temerity. The true 

 criterion as to whether a serpent is or is not poison- 

 ous, is the presence or the absence of the poison 

 fangs. 



The poisonous ones are also less lively in their 

 motions, as the few serpents which are harmless are 

 less lively than the snakes ; the principal distinctions 

 are, however, to be sought in the appearance of the 

 species. There is one character which prevents the 

 vipers from being confounded with those poisonous 

 representatives in the west, the crotali. The last 

 have second or posterior lappets to the nostrils, and 

 the vipers have not. Practically this distinction is 

 of very little consequence, as the two are never found 

 in the same places, and as, though they were, they 

 are equally to be avoided. 



The viper family, or rather tribe, admits of sub- 

 division into four sections; the first having the scales 

 on the head of nearly the same size and character as 

 those on the upper part of the body, and this is a 

 distinction between them and the non-venomous co- 

 lubers. The second have large plates on the top of 

 the head, resembling those of the colubers, but they 



have the poison fangs apart like the former; the third, 

 the tail flattened like an oar for swimming, or other- 

 wise different from the typical vipers ; the fourth 

 have the poison fangs in the same row with other 

 maxillary teeth, only larger in size, and the scales on 

 the belly and tail like those of the boa and crotalus, 

 but as they do not inhabit the same part of the world 

 as either of these, there is no danger of confounding 

 them in wild nature. They make in all ten genera, 

 or subgenera, in Cuvier's arrangement. 



VIPERA Vipers, properly so called, or those 

 which have the scales on the head similar to those on 

 the back ; but some even of these have differences in 

 this respect. 



Common Viper ( V, bents). This is the only poi- 

 sonous serpent which occurs in Britain, and it is not 

 very common or very dangerous, except in very dry 

 and warm parts of the country, and during the hot 

 season. Being the only British reptile whose bite is 

 in the least to be dreaded, we shall be more particular 

 in our notice of it, but it seems subject to some varie- 

 ties of colour. Its length is from a foot and a half to 

 two feet, and it greatest diameter in the latter case 

 about one inch. The general colour on the upper 

 part is brown or russet, but in some instances it is 

 ash-grey. It is marked with an irregular zig-zag 

 black Hue along the back, and with a row of black 

 spots upon each flank ; the belly is generally slate- 

 grey, and covered with plates, varying in number 

 from one hundred and forty-four to one hundred and 

 seventy-seven ; the plates on the tail are still more 

 variable in number, being sometimes not more than 

 twenty-nine, and in other instances as many as sixty- 

 eight ; the head is blunt arid truncated in front, 

 broader posteriorly than the neck and anterior part 

 of the body, depressed on the tip, and a little heart- 

 shaped ; the top of the head is covered by small 

 granulated scales, and there are six plates on the 

 muzzle, two of which are perforated for the openings 

 of the nostrils, and form black spots ; on the upper 

 part of the head there are two divergent black lines 

 in the form of the letter V ; the upper jaw is whitish, 

 with small spots of black, and the under jaw is yel- 

 lowish ; the eyes, which are surrounded by black 

 borders, are very small, but very clear and brilliant ; 

 the tongue is soft, very extensile and retractile, di- 

 vided into two points at its extremity, and of a black- 

 ish or greyish colour. The old story of vipers being 

 capable of poisoning with the tongue, and all the 

 metaphorical allusions to the poisonous tongues of 

 serpents which are founded upon it, must be placed 

 in the category of idle stories. 



The varieties of the common viper may be ranged 

 according as one or another of the tints which enter 

 into the general colour is the more predominant. 

 They are accordingly red, brown, grey, ,blue. and 

 black, but still these are only shades of difference, 

 the causes of which are not known, arid which occur 

 at the same places, and even in the same family ; the 

 brown and grey, as being the intermediate tints, are 

 the most common. 



When let alone, vipers are very quiet and inoffen- 

 sive animals, never in the least interfering with man 

 or his operations, but is rather serviceable to him, 

 by eating insects, worms, mollusca, field-mice and 

 moles. They are active only for a portion of the 

 year, always the shorter the more northerly the cli- 

 mate ; and when they hybernate, a number of them 

 are often rolled up in a bundle in the same retreat. 



