NITDA. 185 



VIPERA, Daudin. 



The vipers, most of which were confounded with the Colubers by Linnaeus, 

 on account of their double sub-caudal plates, require to be separated from them 

 from the circumstance of their having poisonous fangs. There are also some 

 serpents which naturally belong to this division, whose sub-caudal plates are 

 either wholly are partially simple. They are all distinguished from the Rattle- 

 snakes by the absence of the pits behind the nostrils. 



rip. brachyura, Cuv. (The Minute Viper.) The intensity and activity of 

 its poison renders it one of the most terrible of the genus. The genus of the 

 vipers is now variously subdivided. To one of these subgenera, NAIA, belongs 

 the celebrated 



Col. haje, L. Greenish bordered with brownish. The jugglers of Egypt, 

 by pressing on the nape of the neck with their finger, throw it into a kind of 

 catalepsy which renders it stiff and immoveable, or turns it into a rod, as they 

 term it. Its habit of raising itself up when approached, induced the ancient 

 Egyptians to believe that it was the guardian of the fields it inhabited. They 

 made it the emblem of the protecting divinity of the world, and sculptured it 

 on each side of a globe upon the gates of their temples. It is indubitably the 

 serpent described by the ancients under the name of the Asp of Egypt, Asp of 

 Cleopatra, &c. 



In addition to these two tribes of Serpents, properly so styled, a third has 

 lately been recognised, in which the organisation and armature of the jaws are 

 nearly the same as in the non-venomous serpents, but where the first maxillary 

 tooth, larger than the others, is perforated for the transmission of the poison, 

 as in the venomous serpents with isolated fangs. 



These Serpents form two genera, BUNGARUS and HYDBUS, distinguished, 

 like those of the two neighbouring families, by the covering of the abdomen 

 and the under part of the tail. 



FAMILY III. 



NUDA. 



OUR third and last family of the Ophidians, that of the Naked Serpents, 

 consists of but one very singular genus, which several 

 naturalists have thought fit to refer to the Batrachians, 

 although we are ignorant as to the fact of its under- 

 going any metamorphosis. It is the CECILIA, Lin- 

 neus *. So called because its eyes, excessively small, 



* Ccecilia, from rw^Awij/, is the Latin name of the Slow- worm (Orvet,) which in 

 several parts of Europe is still called blind, although it has very fine eyes. 



