72 TRIGONOCEPHALUSCONTORTRIX. 



corresponds with it neither in its character nor habits; of that he says, "maxillae 

 apex simus, triqueter adoriter homines, circum pedes convolvens, sed innocuus," 

 while this he is desirous to prove a poisonous animal "caput latum, valde 

 convexum, saccules venenatos habet, sed tela non reperi." 



Daudin, from some researches of PaUsot de Beauvais, and from his own obser- 

 vations, makes this animal a new genus, cenchris, saying at the same time that 

 the hog nose of Catesby was synonymous with it, and that the comimon hog nose 

 is the Boa contortrix, in which he was mistaken. There are doubtless several 

 species of hog nose snakes in the country both at the north and south, but all are 

 widely different from the Boa contortrix (Trigonocephalus contortrLx). Daudin's 

 description of the cenchris mokeson is good, and agrees well ^vith the Trigono- 

 cephalus contoi'trix; "body thick; tail short and cyhndrical; head large, covered 

 with plates in front and scales behind; jaws with fangs." "The colour of the 

 cenchris mokeson," he says, "appears from a drawing done from nature, by Peale, 

 the proprietor and director of the Philadelphia Museum, of a reddish-brown; the 

 body and tail marked with fifteen large transverse dark bands; these are narrowest 

 in the centre," (viz: along the vertebral line,) "and are broader and darker at the 

 sides." 



Cuvier is as wrong in referring the cenchris mokeson of Daudin to the genus 

 heterodon,* as in saying that Daudin himself knew it only from the figure of the 

 hog nose of Catesby, when in fact he had a very fair drawing furnished him by 

 Peale, easily recognised by those acquainted with the animal; and besides this he 

 has given two good figures on the same plate,t one the head of the hog nose, 

 and the other the head of his mokeson, shewing clearly that they belong to very 

 different genera. 



* Regn. Anim., torn. ii. p. 62, note 2. 



t Hist. Nat. des Rept., torn. v. pi. xl., fig. 25; mokeson, fig. 2S, hog nose. 



