POISON-FANGS OF THE VIPER. 113 



sciences are founded, and even analogous reasoning is not admitted as valid proof of an 

 asserted fact. There is hardly any new discovery which does not destroy some old and respect- 

 able theory, and give entirely a new idea of the law of nature on which it depends. 



The operation of the senses is in itself one of the known laws of nature, by which we dis- 

 cover facts and through which we are enabled to exercise our reasoning faculties. A human 

 being without the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, would be the dullest animal on the face 

 of the earth, and as long as the privation lasted, would hold a lower place than a sponge or a 

 medusa. If we once acknowledge that the evidence of the senses is not to believed, we must 

 reject the whole of the physical sciences. Astronomical observations, chemical experiments, 

 geological surveys, anatomical researches, and the whole of natural history, must be at once 

 thrown aside if such a theory is to be consistently carried out ; and for the same reason, 

 the courts of law must be abolished, depending as they do on the personal observations of 

 human beings, mostly illiterate, and often ignorant to a degree. Repeated observations are 

 the only method of ascertaining the laws of nature, and if they show that certain events, how- 

 ever strange they may appear, have really occurred, they surely prove, not that the senses of 

 the witnesses were deceived, but that another law of nature has been discovered. 



Were the Viper the only creature of whom such an act is related, the phenomenon would 

 be less worthy of belief ; but there is hardly a poisonous Snake of any country by whom the 

 same act is not said to be performed, the narrators not being professed naturalists with a 

 theory, but travellers, hunters, and settlers, casually noting the result of their personal 

 experience. I cannot but think that the accumulated testimony of many trustworthy persons, 

 acting independently of each other, accustomed to observation, and mostly unaware of the 

 importance that would be afterwards attached to their words, is entitled to some respect, 

 and affords legitimate grounds to the truth-seeker, not for contemptuous denial, but for 

 further investigation. 



Several observant inhabitants assert that both sexes assume this protective habit, the male 

 as well as the female receiving the young into the mouth in cases of sudden danger. In those 

 localities, the head of the Viper is always chopped off as soon as the reptile is lulled, and the 

 Viper-catchers say that in such cases the young Vipers frequently are seen crawling out of the 

 severed neck. 



I certainly never saw the Viper act in this manner, but I have had very few opportunities 

 of watching this reptile in a wild state and noting its habits ; whereas those who spend their 

 lives in the forests, and especially those men who add to their income by catching or killing 

 these reptiles, speak of the reception of the young into the mouth of the parent, as a fact too 

 well known to be disputed. 



It has been objected that the young would be consumed by the gastric juice of the parent 

 — one of the most sensible objections that has been made. But this assertion has been invali- 

 dated by the researches of able anatomists and experimentalists, such as Mr. F. T. Buckland, 

 etc., who have discovered by careful dissection, two facts ; the one, that the young may be 

 concealed within the expansile body of the parent without entering the true stomach at all, the 

 oesophagus or gullet forming a highly expansile antechamber between the throat and the 

 actual stomach ; and the other, that if they should happen to do so, the gastric juice would 

 not hurt them. Incredible, therefore, as the possibility of such an act may seem, it can but be 

 acknowledged that the weight of practical testimony is wholly in its favor. Moreover, the 

 various suggestions offered to account for the deception practised by the Viper upon the eyes 

 of observers, just as if it had been a professed conjurer performing before an audience, are 

 really puerile in the extreme, and if they happen to affect the written testimony of one person, 

 they are contradicted by the written testimony of another. It is to be hoped that if the Viper 

 really does act in the manner stated, a specimen may be obtained with the young still within 

 her body, and attested in such a manner that no objector may invalidate the proof by saying 

 that the old one had been captured and the young pushed down her throat by force. 



The head of the Viper affords a very good example of the venomous apparatus of the 

 poisonous Serpents, and is well worthy of dissection, which is better accomplished under 

 water than in air. The poison-fangs lie on the sides of the upper jaw, folded back and almost 



Vol. III.— 15. 



