CRESTED SNAKE. 383 



with the young Cargills to tell me of their discovery, 

 informed me, that not long previously he had seen 

 in the hand of the barrack-master sergeant, at the 

 barracks in Spanish Town, a curious snake w^hich he 

 too had shot among the rocks of a little line of emi- 

 nences near the railway, about two miles out, called 

 Craigallechie. It was a serpent with a curious- 

 shaped head, and projections on each side which he 

 likened to the fins of an eel, but said they were close 

 up to the jaws. Here are unquestionably two of 

 the same snakes with those of Seba's Thesaurus, taken 

 near Spanish Town, and both about the honeycomb 

 rocks that protrude through the plain of St. Cathe- 

 rine's in detached ridges, and cones, and hummocks, 

 being points of the greater lines of limestone, which 

 have been covered by the detritus of the plains, leav- 

 ing masses of the under rocks here and there un- 

 covered. These are the spots frequented too by the 

 Cyclura ; and are continuations of our Red Hills, — 

 a country that so much resembles the terraced cliifs 

 and red-soil glens of Higuey. 



"Must we not take the horny coverings of the 

 mouth of this Snake, which so much resemble the bill 

 of a bird, as an affinity of the serpent with the tor- 

 toise, and the cutaneous appendages as indicating 

 some relation to the Mata-mata, or Chelys Jimhriata 

 of Spix ? It will be not much of a guess to suppose, 

 that, like the Mata-mata, it conceals all but its head, 

 and leaving that out, waits in ambush for young birds, 

 and seizes them as they approach. I cannot con- 

 sider the habits of this serpent fluviatile at all ; for 

 the gular appendage is no fin." 



^'^ Jan. 6th, 1851. — I showed young Cargill your 



