JUN 16 1898 
ARTICLE III. 
SOME EXPERIMENTS WITH THE SALIVA OF THE GILA MONSTER 
(IELODERMA SUSPECTUM). 
BY JOHN VAN DENBURGH, Pu.D., 
CURATOR DEPARTMENT OF HERPETOLOGY, CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
Read before the American Philosophical Society, September 38, 1897. 
FE ENTRODUCION: 
When, in 1651, Franciscus Hernandez published his Historie animalium et minera- 
lum Nove Hispanie he gave to Europe the first account of a curious reptile native to 
those far-western lands which the Spaniards had won beyond the sea. This was a large 
lizard, said to grow three feet long, thick-set, heavy-jawed, protected by an armor of 
wart-like bony plates, gaudily colored in orange and black—withal so repulsive that 
Wiegmann, nearly two hundred years later, christened it Heloderma horridum. 
For many years, this name was applied to these lizards wherever found, but in 1869 
Prof. Cope discovered that those which had been caught within the borders of the United 
States and Sonora differ in many details from their more southern relatives. He named 
the smaller, northern species Heloderma suspectum. It is this species which, because 
of its former abundance near the Gila river, in Arizona, has become popularly known 
under the name Gila Monster. 
The Indians and Mexicans claimed for these lizards power to inflict a bite even 
more deadly than that of the rattlesnake, but, since they claimed like powers for other 
reptiles known to be quite innocent of venom, their evidence was of little value. It 
received some confirmation, however, when the herpetologists of Europe found that the 
teeth of the Heloderma bear grooves similar to those which in some poisonous snakes 
serve to introduce venom into the wound. Since this was discovered the question of the 
poisonous nature of the bite of the Gila Monster has attracted considerable attention and 
many opinions have been published. 
A. P. S.—VOL. XIX. Z. 
