OCCASIONAL NOTES. 1-45 



become erect, webbed to the gums by a fold of mucous membrane, 

 or they may be brought down by drawing a pencil along the teeth 

 from behind forwards ; the Elapida have fixed fangs, permanently 

 erect. All snakes have ordinary teeth, of course — very long and 

 sharp ones, too, sometimes. 



Is this test absolutely infallible after all ? One would feel 

 inclined to say that ocular demonstration must bring conviction ; 

 nevertheless, our eyes deceive us at times when peculiar com- 

 binations of appearances favour the cheat, and we must allow that 

 even in this there are certain circumstances under which the 

 apparent visibility of fangs may be misleading. It is well known 

 that some innocuous snakes have a long, fang-like tooth, standing 

 apart from the rest, though destitute of any vestige of a poison-sac 

 or duct. Such a thing might by itself easily give rise to mistakes. 

 But Miss Hopley has recently pointed out the remarkable fact 

 that these teeth are erectile, like viperine fangs, in a species 

 which has already been mentioned, Xenodon rhabdocephalus. 

 Under the circumstances, a correct diagnosis could only be 

 arrived at (supposing the specimen to be unknown) by an accurate 

 knowledge of the proper position of true fangs ; or — still more 

 certainly, but less to be recommended — by the crucial experiment 

 of allowing the reptile to bite. 



OCCASIONAL NOTES. 



Wild Cat in Assynt. — I have had presented to me from Scotland an 

 unusually fine specimen of the genuine Wild Cat. It is an old male, with the 

 teeth blunted from age, and one of the canines broken short off. The following 

 is the account given of it by my brother-in-law, the Rev. Geoffrey Hill, who 

 sent it to me :— " In the first week of May, 1879, I was passing through 

 the parish of Assynt, in Sutherlandshire, when I met one of the game- 

 keepers on the Duke of Sutherland's estate. I asked him whether he 

 had trapped any cats during the winter. He said he had caught but 

 one, and that he had the skin of it in his house. I bought it of him, and 

 he promised to let me have the next cat that he killed. I had not beeu in 

 Edinburgh more than a day or two when I received a letter from him 

 telling me that the very morning after he saw me he had succeeded in 

 trapping the finest cat he had ever caught : this he sent me. During my 



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