CHORDA 1 A ;,,, 



the water. All are viviparous. Many are small, but one spei 

 attains a length of two and a half meters and another three and 

 a half. 



Taking now the poisonous serpents in which the fangs are 

 movable, we find that they can eject the poison i! they choi 

 without striking the victim with their fangs. The poison is said 

 to be harmless when taken into the alimentary canal, and hen 

 when bitten, it is customary to suck the wound at once, taking 

 every precaution to keep the poison out of the circulation by 

 a ligature; alcoholic stimulants are valuable in keeping up the 

 heart's action. All these serpents bring forth their young 

 alive. 



Of the vipers the most dangerous is the horned viper of 

 Africa, although it is not so deadly as the cobra. In Europe 

 there is only one poisonous snake, the asp, called Vipera aspis, 

 which extends as far north as Sweden; it inflicts a very painful 

 bite, but rarely fatal. In England there is also only one poison- 

 ous snake, the adder, Pelias vents. In South Africa the larg- 

 est and most poisonous snake is the puff adder, over a meter 

 in length ; its poison is used by the natives to poison their 

 arrow points. On the American continent the representatives 

 of this group have stout bodies with triangular, flattened heads, 

 rather sharply marked off from the rest of the animal by a nar- 

 rower neck. Aside from the rattlesnakes the most dangerous 

 m the United States are two, the copperhead, Ancistrodon con- 

 tortrix, found in mountain districts from New England to 

 Florida and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi; it derives its 

 name from the bronze-colored head; the body is reddish brown 

 with darker bands: and the water moccasin, Ancistrodon pisci- 

 vorus of our Southern states from the Carolinas to Texas ; it 

 lives in or near the water, is only a little over a meter Ion-, an 

 olive color with black bars above and lighter below; it is much 

 dreaded. 



The most deadly serpent in the western hemisphere is the 

 fer-de-lance of Brazil, which causes the death of many persons 



irly. There are a number of small snakes, popular];.- called 

 rattlers because of a small rattle, such as the black rattlesnake 

 "t our Central states, which lives in the burrows of the prairie 

 dogs, the ground rattlesnakes of the South, and others in 



