252 
NATURAL lllSTORV. 
in the place affected, attended with a swelling, first red, 
and afterwards livid. To this succeed great sickness in the 
stomach, bilious and convulsive vomitings, cold sweats, 
pains about the navel, and death itself. These symptoms are 
much more violent, and succeed each other more rapidly, 
after the bite of a rattle-snake ; but when the person is bit 
by the cobra di capello, he dies in an hour, his whole frame 
being dissolved into a putrid mass of corruption. 
In’ the Eastern and Western Indies, the number of noxious 
serpents is various ; in England the inhabitants are ac- 
quainted only with one. The viper is the only animal of 
Great Britain whose bite is dangerous. In the tropical 
climates, the rattle-snake, the whip-snake, and the cobra 
di capello, are the most formidable, though by no means 
the most common. 
Vipers are found in many parts of Europe ; but the dry, 
stony, and in particular the chalky countries abound with 
them. This animal seldom grows to a greater length than 
two feet; though sometimes they are found above three. 
The ground colour of their bodies is a dirty yellow ; that 
of the female is deeper. The back is marked the whole 
length with a series of rhomboid black spots touching each 
other at the points ; the sides with triangular ones, the 
belly entirely black. It is chiefly distinguished from the 
common ringed snake by the colour, which in the latter is 
more beautifully mottled, as well as by the head, which is 
thicker than the body; but particularly by the tail, which, in 
the viper, though it ends in a point, does not run tapering 
to so great a length as in the other. When, therefore, other 
distinctions fail, the difference of the tail can be discerned 
at a single glance. 
The viper differs from most other serpents in being much 
slower, as also in excluding its young completely formed, and 
bringing them forth alive. The kindnessof Providence seems 
exerted not only in diminishing the speed, but also the ferti- 
lity, of this dangerous creature. They copulate in May, and 
are supposed to be about three months before they bring 
forth, and have seldom above eleven eggs at a time, i hese 
are of the size of a blackbird’s egg, and chained together 
in the womb like a string of beads. Each egg contains 
from one to four young ones ; so that the whole of a brood 
may amount to about twenty or thirty. They continue in 
the womb till they come to such perfection as to be able to 
burst from the shell ; and they are said by their own efforts 
toct'K] from their confinement into the open air, wit re 
