PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1 682-3. 



These fangs are placed without the upper jaws, towards the forepart of the 

 mouth, not fastened to the maxilla, as the other teeth; but the 1 outmost 

 and largest fangs (fig. 6, g.) were fixed to that bone (f.), which if any, may be 

 thought to be the ear-bone. The other fangs I could not perceive were fastened 

 to any bone, but to muscles or tendons there. These fangs or larger teeth 

 were not to be perceived upon first opening the mouth, they lying couched 

 under a strong membrane or sheath; but so as to make a large rising there on 

 the outside of the smaller teeth of the maxilla; but at pleasure when alive they 

 could raise them to do execution with, not unlike as a lion or a cat does its 

 claws. These teeth were hooked and bent like the teeth of a barbarossa ; but 

 some of the smaller of them (fig. 7) were bent at right angles, but their shape 

 and size will be best understood by the figures we have made of them. On 

 each side we met with about 6 or 7 not altogether placed so exact as is re- 

 presented in the head in fig. 5; which was done to show them more dis- 

 tinctly. For the second tooth, upon raising it, lies more on the side of the 

 first; and the other being fastened only to muscles or tendons which are flexible, 

 it is difficult to assign them their posture. In all these teeth, especially the 

 larger, we took notice of a pretty large foramen or hole towards the root of it, 

 and towards the point there was a plain visible and large slit, like the cut of a 

 pen sloping, and that part from the slit to the root was perfectly hollow; which 

 first of all was discovered to us by pressing gently with our finger the side of 

 the gum; for then we perceived that the poison readily arose through the hol- 

 low of the tooth, and issued out of the slit. This we tried several times, 

 which trials spoiled our inquiry into the bags and glands that furnish them with 

 that liquor. But our defect therein may well be supplied with what Charas and 

 Redi* have written of the same parts in vipers. -f- This poisonous liquor I ob- 

 served to be of a water-colour, lightly tinged yellow: perhaps in some it may 

 occasionally be deeper, and this, it may be, has given rise to that fond 

 opinion of those who have imagined that it was transmitted by a vessel from 

 the gall-bladder. Indeed scarcely any subject in philosophy has admitted more 

 controversies than this of the poison of vipers, in what it consists, what it is, 

 and how it produces its dire effects. Severinus, in his Vipera Pythia, has made a 

 large collection of them, and who so please may there satisfy their curiosity 

 about it. 



I now proceed to describe the skeleton: and first of the bones of the head. 

 I observed that the cranium (fig. 6, a) here was entire, without sutures, as re- 



* Add also Mead and Fontana. 



+ See vol. i. p. 58, of this Abridgement. And respecting the controversy between Redi and 

 Charas, see ibid. pp. 411 and 654. 



