ATRACTASPIS INORNATUS. 
The specimen described measured from nose to anus 22 inches, and from 
anus to point of tail inch; another specimen 17 inches to anus, from 
thence to apex of tail 1 inch. 
This snake inhabits the eastern districts of the Cape Colony. Of its habits I am not able to 
speak, having never seen it alive, or met a person who had : that it burrows in loose ground, 
I infer from the general form of the head, but more especially from the circumstance that the 
upper jaw is considerably longer than the lower, and that it receives and lodges the latter 
between its limbs, When I first obtained a specimen, I considered I had acquired a new 
form of Tortricidce, and I continued to view it as such till I had leisure to examine it more 
minutely, when I discovered that its place was in a very different section of snakes. The 
length of the fangs, as compared with the head, is remarkable, and I question if the reptile 
is able to raise them so much as to enable it in the act of biting to inflict a wound. To 
it they will be chiefly important as efficient means of preventing the return from the 
gullet of any living object it may have partially swallowed, as nothing which has once 
passed their points, which extend to the commencement of the gullet, will be able, unless 
the reptile wills it, to repass without being necessarily wounded, and, if alive, its death 
immediately occasioned. Without some such provision one can scarcely understand how 
an animal with so small a head and so delicate a lower jaw, quite unequal to destroy by 
force, can succeed in securing the food essential to its existence. 
No one who knew the late Mr. Bibron as I did, will be surprised that I seek to 
associate his name with this new and highly interesting form — a form I never look on 
without recollecting the delight he experienced when I first showed it to him at Chatham, 
many years ago. All honest admirers of the science he so successfully cultivated must, I 
think, feel how greatly they are losers by his premature death ; and I cannot imagine any 
Herpetologist will neglect an opportunity of rendering homage to his memory. 
