Two-Headed Snakes. 51 
Lanzoni relates that he had seen such an animal. Francis 
Redi has left a very particular account of one that was 
catched near Pisa, on the bank of the Arno; and which 
lived from January to February, after it was taken, affording 
many opportunities for experiments and remarks. When 
life was departing, the right head appeared to die seven 
hours before the left. Aldrovandus had one in his cabinet 
at Bologna; and there is one in the museum of the king of 
France, at Paris. 
For further intelligence on this curious and controverted 
subject, I refer to the Count La Cepede’s able disquisition, 
(Des Serpens monstreux.) on Serpentine monsters, (Vol. IV. 
pp- 311—326 of the copy I had the honour to receive from 
him,) wherein, like a sagacious reasoner, he decides the 
whole class of these productions to be anomalies. 
A two-headed serpent is figured, in several views, by 
George Edwards in the fourth volume of his history of birds, 
plate 207, and described. The drawings are of the natura! 
magnitude. He introduces the subject by observing that he 
did aot propose to exhibit monsters in his work, but that the 
species, even if it had not two heads, might be better known 
to the learned world. He mentions an English serpent, 
that had been brought to him, with two distinct heads. The 
specimen he describes was from Barbadoes. 
The other intelligence touching this inquiry, has been 
so fully and properly posted up by Mr. President Clinton, in 
the note FF, subjoined to the discourse he delivered before 
the New-York Literary and Philosophical Society, in 1814. 
and published in the transactions of that learned body, (Vol. 
Il. pp. 160—162.) that I avoid the transcription of his 
luminous statement. 
From the facts stated, and the references made, it ap- 
pears that two-headed snakes have been found in the West- 
Indian and Polynesian Isles, in Great Britain, in Italy, and 
in the state of New-York. An inference arising naturally 
from the premises is, that they are individuals of diffrent 
species, and probably of different genera ; inasmuch as it is 
very unlikely that the two-headed snakes, of remote situa- 
tions on the continents, and more distant localities on the 
islands, were the issue of the North American, or New- 
York Black-Snake. This conclusion is fatal to the suppo- 
sition, that these singular productions constitute a race of 
their own, and propagate their kind in regular succession. 
