146 TiMEHRI. 



It has been an ordinary experience, to have common 

 and uncommon, but quite harmless, species forwarded 

 to me to the Museum, under the name of some deadly 

 snake, usually labarria or bushmaster, whose colouring 

 they generally more or less resembled : and bites from 

 them would naturally be tacked on to the poison-snake ; 

 and a cure, from a poison that had never entered the 

 system, would equally naturally be set down to some 

 casual remedy that some one had proposed or believed 

 in. Tending in the same dire6lion has been the 

 experience gained while travelling about the colony, 

 and in conversing on the subjeft with colonists and natives 

 of various degrees of qualifications for knowledge 

 on the point. 



Apart, however, from the ready and unreasoning 

 reference of nearly all snakes, and especially the large 

 or more vicious-looking species, to poisonous kinds, 

 there do exist in the colony certain species of boas and 

 colubrine snakes which so closely in form and colouring 

 resemble the viperine snakes, — chara6ters no doubt due 

 to adaptive and prote6live modifications — that even one 

 really conversant with the different species, might easily 

 mistake the harmless for the deadly, unless a close exami- 

 nation be made. This is markedly so in the case 

 of some snakes resembling the labarria (Trigonoce- 

 phaliis atrox) ; and the statement becomes luminous 

 when it is borne in mind that it is this very 

 species whose bite, undoubtedly fatal in some cases, 

 is often said to be of little moment in other cases, as 

 judged by the results on persons said to have been bitten 

 by it. At the time of writing, there is on view in the 

 Museum a living specimen of a land boa that is and has 



