Apparatus of Snakes. 
193 
In a hollow between the superior maxillary and palate 
bones, the lower jaw rests when the mouth is closed. It is 
not opposed therefore by any bone in the roof of the mouth, 
a circumstance we might, d priori , have expected from the 
fact of all the teeth being simply of a prehensile and not of 
a cutting or grinding character. 
The intermaxillary bones, which when the maxillary arch 
is complete, form as it were the keystone, are firmly united 
in the mesial line, and, from their attachment to the fixed 
nasal bones, arc not moveable. They are “ divided far" 
from the superior maxillaries—do not support teeth, and 
present nothing of sufficient interest to require a more de¬ 
tailed description. 
Such is a general view of the dental arrangement in these 
reptiles. The number of teeth, I may remark, is subject to 
slight variations, but that which I have given will be found to 
be about the average. 
One portion of the dental apparatus however, from its 
high and peculiar importance in the economy of the animal, 
may well claim a still more minute and particular examina¬ 
tion—this, I need scarcely say is the terrific weapon, which 
renders its apparently defenseless possessor so really formida¬ 
ble. The poison fang (to speak still of one side only), con¬ 
sists of two parts, a rough articulating base or root, and a 
slender, polished, and conical crown, and rises as we have 
of the mouth, the palate bone. To speak more correctly however, the 
posterior portion of it should be called the pterygoid . M. Edwards 
indeed (Elements de Zoologie) likewise gives the name of pterygoid to 
the small bone which, for the reasons already stated, I have called the 
tl posterior portion” of the superior maxillary. The relations of this bone, 
however, do not 1 think warrant the name; connected as it is anteriorly 
with the superior maxillary, and behind with the sphenoid (pterygoid) y 
it has every claim to be called the representative of the malar bone j and, 
even from the former connexion alone, cannot I think with any justice 
be considered as the analogue of the external pterygoid process of the 
sphenoid, 
VOL. II. no. Yin. Q 
