OF VENOMOUS SE It PE NTS. 
251 
sings a quicker measure, tiiey appear to move more brisk 
and lively. All animals have a certain degree of docility ; 
and we find that serpents themselves can be brought to 
move and approach at the voice of their master. From this 
trick successfully practised before the ignorant, it is most 
probable, has arisen all the boasted pretensions which some 
have made to charming of serpents ; an art to which the 
native Americans pretend at this very day. 
Of venomous Serpents. In all countries, the poison 
of the serpent is sufficiently formidable to deserve notice 
and to excite our attention to its nature and effects It will 
therefore, in the first place, be proper to describe its seat in 
the animal, as also the instrument by which the wound is 
made, and the poison injected. In all this venomous class 
of reptiles, whether the viper, the rattle-snake, or the cobra 
di capello, there are two large teeth or fangs that issue from 
the upper jaw, and that hang out beyond the lower. The 
rest of the snake tribe are destitute of these; and it is most 
probable, that wherever these fangs are wanting, the animal 
is harmless; on the contrary, wherever they are found, it is 
to be avoided as the most pestilent enemy. Our first "Teat 
attention, therefore, upon seeing a serpent, should be directed 
to the teeth. The black snake, the Libova, the blind worm, 
and a hundred others that might be mentioned, have their 
teeth of an equal size, fixed into the jaws, and with no other 
apparatus for inflicting a dangerous wound titan a dog or a 
lizard ; but it is otherwise with the venomous tribe we are 
now describing; these are well furnished, not only with a 
laboratory, where the poison is formed, but a canal, by 
which it is conducted to the jaw, a bag under the tooth 
for keeping it ready for every occasion, and also an apre- 
ture in the tooth itself for injecting it into the wound. The 
venom contained in this bag is a yellowish, thick, tasteless 
liquor, which injected into the blood is death, yet which 
may be swallowed without any danger. 
The fangs that give the wound are large in proportion to 
die size of the animal that bears them ; crooked, vet sharp 
enough to inflict a ready wound. They grow one on each 
s >de, and sometimes two, from two moveable bones in the 
upper jaw, which, by sliding backward or forward, have a 
power of erecting or depressing the teeth at pleasure. In 
these bones are also fixed many teeth, but no way venomous, 
a pd only serving to take and hold the animal’s prey. If a 
Vl P er inflicts the wound, and the remedy be neglected, the 
s ymptomsare not without danger. It first causes an acute pain 
