VOL. v.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 475 



yet very soon after appeared swelled again, and had her jaws disjoined sa 

 before. 



Exp. II. — We took a viper, and including her in the largest sort of 

 small receivers, we emptied the glass very carefully, and the viper moved up 

 and down within, as if to seek for air, and after a while foamed a little at the 

 mouth, and left some of the foam sticking to the inside of the glass : her body 

 swelled not considerably, and her neck less, till a considerable time after we had 

 left pumping ; but afterwards the body and neck grew prodigiously tumid, and 

 a blister appeared upon the back. An hour and a half after the exhaustion of 

 the receiver, the distended viper gave manifest signs of life ; but we observed 

 none afterwards. The tumor reached to the neck, but did not seem much to 

 swell the under-chop. Both the neck and a great part of the throat being 

 held betwixt the eye and the candle, were transparent enough where the scales 

 did not darken them. The jaws remained mightily opened and somewhat dis- 

 torted ; the epiglottis with the rimula laryngis (which remained gaping) was 

 protruded almost to the further end of the nether-chop. As it were from be- 

 neath this epiglottis came the black tongue, and reached beyond it, but seemed 

 by its posture not to have any life, and the mouth also was grown blackish 

 within : but the air being readmited after 23 hours in all, the viper's mouth 

 was presently closed, though soon after it was opened again, and continued 

 long so ; and scorching or pinching the tail made a motion in the whole body, 

 that argued some life. 



Exp. III. — April 25. To these experiments upon vipers, I shall add one 

 made upon an ordinary harmless snake. We included such an animal, together 

 with a gage, in a pretty portable receiver, which being exhausted and well se- 

 cured against the ingress of the air, was laid aside in a quiet place, where it 

 continued from 10 or 11 o'clock in the forenoon, till about nine the next 

 morning ; and then my occasions calling me abroad, I looked upon the snake, 

 which though he seemed to be dead, and gave no signs of life upon the shak- 

 ing of the receiver, yet upon holding the glass a convenient distance from a 

 moderate fire, he did in a short time manifest himself to be alive by several 

 tokens, and even by putting forth his forked tongue. In that condition I left 

 him, and by reason of several avocations, came not to look upon him again 

 till early in the afternoon of the next day, at which time he was grown past 

 recovery, and his jaws, which were formerly shut, gaped exceedingly wide, as 

 if they had been stretched open by some external violence. 



The Third Title. 

 Of the Phcenomejia afforded hy Frogs in an Exhausted Receiver. Sept. Q, 1662. 

 The same considerations that induced me to make trials upon vipers, invited 



30 ^ 



