572 AMFHIB1ALA. 



Of the first sort of teeth are two rows on each side, viz. five in a 

 row, the inward less than the outward, there being twenty in all. 

 In the upper jaw there are only sixteen, viz. five on each side, placed 

 backward, and six before. These do no harm, which was known of 

 old to mountebanks, who, to give a proof of the efficacy of their 

 antidotes, would suffer themselves to be bitten by vipers, but first 

 took care to spoil them of their fangs. 



The fangs are placed without the upper jaws, towards the fore 

 part of the mouth, not fastened to the maxillae, as the other teeth, 

 but the two outmost and largest fangs were fixed to that bone, 

 which may be thought to be the ear-bone ; the other fangs, or 

 smaller ones, seemed not fixed to any bone, but rather to muscles 

 and tendons. The fangs were not to be perceived on first opening 

 the mouth, lying couched under a strong membrane or sheath f but 

 so as to make a large rising there on the outside of the smaller teeth 

 of the maxilla ; but at pleasure, when alive, the animal can raise 

 them to do execution with, as a cat or lion does its claws. These 

 fangs were hooked and bent, like the tusks of the babyroussa, but 

 some of the smaller ones were bent at right angles ; on each side we 

 meet with about six or seven of these. In all these teeth was a 

 pretty large foramen or hole towards the root of it, and towards the 

 point was a plainly visible large slit, sloping like the cut of a pen ; 

 the part from the slit being perfectly hollow ; and on pressing 

 gently with the finger on the side of the gum, the poison, which 

 was of a yellowish colour, was readily perceived to issue from the 

 hollow of the tooth through the slit. 



The vertebrae, according to the figure of the body, were smallest 

 towards both extremes, and largest in the middle. From the neck 

 to the vent there were as many vertebrae as scales on the belly, viz. 

 168 ; but from the vent to the setting on of the rattle were twenty- 

 jiine more in number than the scales. 



The rattle is well described by Dr. Grew, who observes that it 

 consists of hollow, hard, dry, and semitransparent bones, nearly of 

 the same size and figure ; resembling in some degree the shape of 

 the human os sacrum ; for although only the last or terminal one 

 seems to have a rigid epiphysis joined to it, yet have every one of 

 them the like ; so that the tip of every uppermost bone runs within 

 two of the bones below it; by which artifice they have not only a 

 moveable coherence, but also make a more multiplied sound ; each 

 bone hitting against two others at the same time. 



