VOL. XXX^'III.] PHILOSaPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 650 



or skin of a flesh-colour, vvhicli rises over them when they are raised; which 

 I take to be only at the will of the snake to do injury. This skin does not 

 break by the rising of the tooth only, but keeps whole till the bite is given, 

 and then is pierced by the tooth, by which the poison is let out. The head 

 being laid on the hogshead, I took two little twigs or splinters of sticks; and 

 having turned the head on its cro\v,i, opened the mouth, and lifted up the 

 fana- or springing-tooth on one side several times; in doing whicli I at last 

 broke the skin. The head gave a sudden champ with its mouth, breaking 

 from my sticks ; in which I observed that the poison ran down in a lump like 

 oil, round the root of the tooth. I then turned the other side of the head, and 

 resolved to be more careful to keep the mouth open on the like occasion, and 

 observe more narrowly the consequence. For it is to be observed, that though 

 the heads of snakes, terrapins (a sort of tortoise) and such like vermin, be cut 

 off, yet the body will not die in a long time after. After opening the mouth 

 on the other side, and lifting up that fang also several times, he endeavoured 

 to give another bite or champ. But I kept his mouth open, and the tooth 

 pierced the film, which emitted a stream like one full of blood, in blood-letting, 

 and cast some drops on the sleeve of the carpenter's shirt, who had no waistcoat 

 on. And though nothing could then be seen of it on the shirt, yet in washing 

 there appeared five green specks, which every washing appeared plainer and 

 plainer, and lasted as long as the shirt, which the carpenter told me was about 

 three years after. The head we threw afterwards down on the ground, and a 

 sow came and eat it before us, and received no harm." 



" I will likewise give you a story of the violent effects of this sort of poison, 

 because I depend on the truth of it, having it from an acquaintance of good 

 credit, one Colonel James Taylor of Metapony. He being with others in the 

 woods a surveying, they found a rattle-snake, and cut ofF his head, with about 

 3 inches of the body. Then with a green stick, which he had in his hand, 

 about a foot and a half long, the bark being newly peeled ofF, urged and provoked 

 the head, till it bit the stick in fury several times. On this the colonel observed 

 small green streaks to rise up along the stick towards his hand. He threw the 

 stick on the ground, and in a quarter of an hour, the stick of itself split into 

 several pieces, and fell asunder from end to end." 



Father Labat likewise tells us (in his Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de 1' Ame- 

 rique, Tom. iv.) that serpents, when they bite their prey, retire, to avoid 

 being hurt by them ; and when dead, cover them with their spittle, extend 

 their feet along their sides and tails, if quadrupeds, and then swallow them. 



