ORDER OPHIDIA. 331 



in pursuit of which it proceeds to the mountains of the 

 island. 



Of the Python bora, Russel is the first who has given us 

 any account. It is a native of Bengal, and not venomous, 

 notwithstanding the assertion of the Indigenes, who affirm 

 that persons bitten by it have a cutaneous eruption over their 

 entire body in the course of ten or twelve days. 



Over the rest of the separations from the Coluber in the 

 text, we pass, as there is positively nothing to be adduced 

 concerning them, and proceed at once to those which might 

 be conveniently called Adders.* 



The head of this division is, in general, depressed. Its con- 

 tour is most usually oval, though sometimes only elliptical. 

 Some species have the faculty of widening and depressing it 



* We have in the text translated the French word couleuvre, Latin coluber, 

 by adder, in preference to using the term snake, under which the adders, as 

 well as a number of other serpents materially diiFering from them, have 

 been most improperly comprehended. The proper translation of the 

 French word is certainly adder : the Latin word coluber may very pro- 

 perly bear the same signification, though very vaguely employed by ancient 

 writers. Anguis we have preferred to translate by snake, instead of the 

 very objectionable generic terra slow-wonn. We have had an opportunity 

 of observing before, the difficulty, and in many cases utter impossibility of 

 finding English equivalents for the names of Cuvier's subdivisions, and the 

 impropriety of applying English specific names to many of them. But the 

 word adder has the advantage of not having been generically used by our 

 systematists, and may therefore be conveniently applied to the subdivision 

 now under review. Indeed, the best recommendation that any name so 

 applied can have, is that it has not been used before for a genus including 

 very different species from those of the one for which it is employed 

 again, or that it has not designated a species totally different from any 

 comprehended under its new generic application. The propriety or impro- 

 priety of the translation is not of so much importance. The great objection 

 to our translation is, that the word adder or viper is universally applied 

 by the country people to the snake with poison fangs, which is therefore 

 venomous. 



