ILLUSTRATIONS. 125 



young crotali, when alarmed or in danger, take shelter in the stomach (or oeso- 

 phagus) of both their parents, or the mother only ?" Carver says, " I once 

 killed a female that had seventy young ones in its belly ; but those were per- 

 fectly formed, and I saw them just before retire to the mouth of their mother, as 

 a place of security on my approach." Several intelligent persons say the same 

 of the common viper, in England, and yet the London viper catchers assert that 

 it never happens. In the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 

 respectable testimony is adduced to establish similar occurrences. It is said that 

 wild penny-royal, or dittany of Virginia, is fatal to this serpent, and that it 

 never comes in places where it grows. See Lonthorp's Philosophical Transac- 

 tions, wl 2. 



Van der Douk, in his account of the New Netherland, says, that there grows 

 in New Netherland the snakeroot, which, as soon as the rattlesnake smells, he 

 dies ; that a large rattlesnake was found on Long Island, and some present took 

 of that herb, and, after chewing it, fixed it on the end of a stick, and held it at 

 some distance from the' snake's -nose, and that it no sooner inhaled the soent 

 than it was seized with a fit of trembling, and died instantly ; and that such was 

 the rarity of the snake before liis time, in 1655, that a man might go about in- 

 to the fields and woods, and not see one in seven years ; and that the indiani 

 extracted its four sharp teeth, and used them as a substitute for lancets. Both 

 these accounts of the deleterious effects of pennyroyal and snakeroot upon the 

 rattlesnake, are fabulous. 



Some of the most respectable ancient writers believed in the existence of a 

 small kind of serpent, which moved forward and backward, and had two heads, 

 one at each extremity. Galen and .Slian represented it as an undeniable fact ; 

 and Pliny says, " Geminum habet caput, tanquam parum esset uno ore effundi 

 venenum." Linnaeus has described this species of serpents as having rings on 

 the body and tail, no scales, and a smooth, equal cylindrical body ; the tail 

 hardly to be distinguished from the head, and very obtuse. Dr. Bancroft, in 

 his Essay on the Natural History of Guiana, observes, that it is said there are 

 three kinds of double-headed snakes in Guiana. He saw but one species ; it was 

 twelve inches long ; had very fine teeth, almost obscured by the gums ; its eyes 

 were hardly discoverable ; and both ends have the same external appearance, 

 from whence it has been thought to have two heads, although only one mouth it, 

 discoverable, which is small. From this it appears that those who believe in the 

 reality of two heads, one at each extremity, lalwur under a mistake ; and that 

 their error has originated from the similarity of the head and tail, and the 

 small ness of the animal. Herrera, in his History of America says, that inChiapa 

 he found a two headed serpent, eighteen inches long, in the form of a roman T, 

 and very venomous it not only. kills, snys ho, by its bite, but if any tread upon 



