64 REPTILES. 



FAMILY III. 



NAKED SERPENTS. 



Our third and last family of the Serpents or 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 undergoing any metamorphosis. It is the 



Cecilia*, Lin. 



So called because its eyes, excessively small, are nearly hidden beneath 

 the skin, and sometimes are wanting. The skin is smooth, viscous 

 and furrowed by annular plaits or wrinkles ; it is apparently naked, but 

 on dissection we find, in its thickness, perfectly formed though delicate 

 scales, regularly arranged in several transverse rows between the folds of 

 the skin-f-. The head is depressed; the anus round and nearly at the end 

 of the body ; the ribs much too short to surround the trunk : the articu- 

 lation of the bodies of their vertebra? is effected by hollow conical facets 

 filled with a gelatinous cartilage, as in Fishes and in some of the last of 

 the Batrachians; the cranium is united to the first vertebra by two tuber- 

 cles, as is the case in the Batrachians, which are approximated in this re- 

 spect only by the Amphisbaenae among the serpents ; their maxillary bones 

 cover the orbit, which resembles a very small hole, and those of the tem- 

 ples the temporal depression, so that the head above presents one conti- 

 nuous bony buckler ; the hyoid bone, composed of three pairs of arches, 

 might induce us to suppose that at an early period it is furnished with 

 branchiae. The maxillary and palatine teeth are arranged on two concen- 

 tric lines, as in Proteus; but they are frequently sharp, and curved back- 

 wards, like those of serpents, properly so styled. The nostrils open be- 

 hind the palate, and as the tympanal bone is fixed along with those that 

 compose the cranial shield, there is no moveable pedicle to the lower jaw. 



The auricle of the heart of these animals is not so deeply divided to in- 

 duce us to consider it as double, but their second lung is as small as in 

 other serpents; the liver is divided into a great number of transverse la- 

 mellae. Vegetable matters, earth and sand, are found in their intestines. 

 The only small bone contained in the ear is a little plate on the fenestra 

 ovalis, as in the Salamanders. 



Some of them have an obtuse muzzle, relaxed skin, deep wrinkles, and 

 two small ciliar near the nostrils. Such is 



Ccecilia annidata, Spix, xxvii, 1. Blackish, with eighty and odd 

 plicae marked with white circles; teeth conical. Found in Brazil, 

 where it lives in marshes several feet beneath the surface. 



* Ccrcilia, the Latin for the Greek tuphlos, is the name of the Slow-worm (Orvet), 

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

 f A fact I have ascertained in the C. glutinosa, the White -bellied Cacilia, &c. 



