THE LIGNIFIED SNAKE FROM BRAZIL, 555 



THE LIGNIFIED SNAKE FROM BRAZIL. 



PROFESSOR ASA GRAY.' 



The Popular Science Monthly for November, and the Bulletin of the Torrey 

 Botanical Club, for the same month, have reproduced an account given in the 

 French Li Nature last April, of a remarkable phenomenon. The abstract in the 

 Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club is the most condensed, and the essential 

 part is copied here : the cut illustrating the object, however, is poor; that in the 

 Popular Science Monthly is a somewhat better representation. 



" The object represented is a small Brazilian reptile — the jaracaca — which 

 was found within the trunk of an ipe-mirim, a tree of common occurrence in the 

 province of Matto Grosso, to the north of the Amazons, where the specimen was 

 discovered. The piece of wood containing the reptile, after an examination by 

 the scientists of Rio de Janeiro, was taken to France by Mr. Lopez Netto (Brazil- 

 ian Minister to the United States,) and placed in the hands of Mr. Louis Olivier, 

 who, after a careful study of the specimen, submitted the results thereof to the 

 Botanical Society of France. 



"What is astonishing," says Mr. Olivier, in an article on the subject in La 

 Nature, '■ is that the entire body of the snake is lignified, ^ the anatomical study 

 that I have made of it having shown me that it consists of cells and fibres like 

 those of the secondary w^ood which surrounds it. It is impossible to explain the 

 fact by saying that there has occurred a formaiion of these elements in a hollow,, 

 which, having been traversed by the animal, has preserved the form of the latter; 

 for on the piece of wood it is not only the contour of the snake that is visible, 

 but, indeed, the whole relief of its body. 



Just beyond the head there is likewise observed in relief a small cylinder 

 which appears to represent the larva of an insect. It seems, then that the snake, 

 in pursuing the latter into a fissure in the tree, has insinuated itself between the 

 wood and the bark into the cambium-layer, which is well known to be the gener- 

 ator of wood and secondary liber. The function of this cambium-tissue is two- 

 fold ; in the interior it gives rise, in a centripetal direction, to ligneous elements, 

 the youngest of which are consequently found at periphery of the wood; but, to- 

 ward the exterior, on the contrary, it produces, in a centrifugal direction, liber- 

 fibres, elongated cells, and prosenchymatous elements, the youngest of which are 

 therefore, situated on the internal surface of the bark. If, then, a foreign body 

 be introduced as far as the external limit of the wood, it will, in a few years, be- 

 come invested with a series of ligneous layers, which are themselves protected by 



1 Except the center, in which are found the constituent elements of the animal. 



