OP SERPENTS. 209 



To us their slender form, their undulating motion, their 

 vivid coloring, their horrid stench, their forky tongue, and 

 their envenomed fangs, are totally harmless ; and in this 

 country their uses even serve to counterbalance the mischief 

 they sometimes occasion. 



If we take a survey of serpents in general, they have marks 

 by which they are distinguished from all the rest of animated 

 iiature. They have the length and the suppleness of the eel, 

 but want fins to swim with : they have the scaly covering 

 and pointed tail of the lizard, but they want legs to walk 

 with : they have the crawling motion of the worm, but, un- 

 like that animal, they have lungs to breathe with : like all 

 the reptile kind, they are resentful when offended ; and 

 nature has supplied them with terrible arms to revenge 

 every injury. 



Though they are possessed of very different degrees of 

 malignity, yet they are all formidable to man, and have a 

 strong similitude of form to each other ; and it will be proper 

 to mark the general characters before we descend to particu- 

 lars. With respect to their conformation, all serpents have a 

 very wide mouth, in proportion to the size of the head ; and, 

 what is very extraordinary, they can gape and swallow the 

 head of another animal which is three times as big as their 

 own. A toad was taken out of the belly of a snake, at Lord 

 Spencer's, near London, the body of which was thrice the 

 diameter of the animal that swallowed it. However, it is in 

 no way surprising that the skin of the snake should stretch to 

 receive so large a morsel ; the wonder seems how the jaws 

 could take it in. To explain this, it must be observed that 

 the jaws of this animal do not open as ours, in the manner of 

 a pah- of hinges, where bones are applied to bones, and play 

 upon one another ; on the contrary, the serpent's jaws are 

 held together at the roots by a stretching muscular skin ; by 

 which means they open as widely as the animal chooses to 

 stretch them, and admit of a prey much thicker than the 

 snake's own body. The throat, like stretching leather, dilates 

 to admit the morsel ; the stomach receives it in part, and the 



