» 
| å . Reptiles. of Massackusetts. 37 
" si 
gm 
> 
ie 4 A $ 
. . QOmomarus. Lin. 
- Generic characters. Head large, triangular, 
rounded in front, covered with plates anteriorly ; 
vertex and occiput with scales; a deep pit between 
the eye and nostril ; upper jaw armed with poison- 
ous fangs; body elongated, thick; tail short and 
thick, terminating in a rattle, which is a corneous 
production of the epidermis ; plates on the abdomen, 
and under the tail. 
C. durissus. Kalm. The banded Rattle Snake. 
Turton’s Linneus, vol. i. p. 672. 
Shaw’s Gen. Zoology, vol. iii. pt. 2. p. 317, et fig. 
Harlan’s Med. and Phys. Res. p. 132. 
N. A. Herpetol. vol. iii. p. 81. 
This species, which is generally known in New 
England as the rattle snake, is extensively distrib- 
uted throughout the State. Two fine specimens, 
taken at Douglas the last summer, gave me an oppor- 
tunity for minute observation. One of them meas- 
ured three feet and one inch in length, and was five 
inches in circumference ; the other was three feet 
long. From the former, I drew up the following 
notes : 
Upper part of the body, of a yellowish brown 
color, with rhomboidal black spots continued along 
the back, margined with bright yellow ; upon each 
side of these rhombs a black band is continued to 
the sides of the body, where it terminates in an ir- 
regularly quadrate black spot; tail black. Body, 
