.;; , RATTLESNAKE, ' |> 



DIV, II. WITHOUTFEET, 

 SERPENT S, 



With plates on the abdomen % plates and fcales beneath the tail s a V. RATTLE= 



SNAKE 



rattle at its end, Linn^us, ' 



Crotalus horridus, 167. Scutisj 23. Scutellis, Lhi. 372, 25. Great, 



■pj With a brown broad head : yellowifli brown back, marked with 

 broad tranfverfe dentated bars of black s fcales rough : belly cine- 

 reous : the jaws furnifhed with fmall Iharp teeth 1 four fangs in the 

 upper jaw, incurvated, large, and pointed, the inftruments of death j at 

 the bafe of each a round orifice, opening into a hollow, that near the 

 end of the tooth appears again in form of a fmall channel 1 thefe teeth 

 may be ere<5ted or compreffed ', when in the aftion of biting, they force 

 out of a gland near their roots, the fatal juice •• this is received into the 

 round orifice of the teeth, conveyed through the tube into the channel, 

 and thence with unerring direftion into the wound. 



The tail furnifhed with a rattle, confifting of joints loofely conned- 

 ed i the number uncertain, depending, as is pretended, on the age of 

 the animal, it receiving with every year a new joint. Authors men- 

 tion forty and feventy*, 



Rattlefnakes grow to the length of eight feet, and, according to a 

 news-paper acount, to fourteen. 



« Kalms in the Sivedijh Medical Effays, 290.>=»Ph. Tr. abridg. vii, 41 z. 



N a Swarm 



