VIPERS AND COLUBRINES 
attack with little or no provocation. The second of 
the better known “ popular ’’ names, i.e. King Cobra, 
is a name which has possibly been referred to the hama- 
dryad from the cobra itself. Legend again—in snake 
natural history there is much that is legendary—to use 
a non-provocative expression, relates that a large 
snake was observed to utter a peculiar note, and that 
from neighbouring thickets out came a crowd of 
smaller snakes, who prostrated themselves before the 
monarch ; he, however, selected a fat one for imme- 
diate consumption. But there is this basis of truth 
recorded in the scientific name—that the Ophophagus 
is a snake-eater by choice ; specimens at the Zoo are 
fed upon common English grass snakes, which they 
eat almost after the fashion of an Englishman devour- 
ing a stick of asparagus. 
The older naturalists put together all the poisonous 
snakes, and separated them from the harmless varieties, 
and in this way associated the vipers and the cobras. 
But we now know that one set of poisonous snakes is 
not very nearly related to the other. In the vipers the 
poison teeth have the characters that we have already 
dealt with, and which we need not therefore recapitu- 
late. In this snake the hinder series of teeth are merely 
grooved, and the poison pours along all or any of them 
with indifference to reach the wound which they have 
made, 
THE GREEN TREE VIPER 
The snake is apt to be as wily nowadays as he was 
in the Garden of Eden some time since ; but his guile 
takes a different form. The aim of the modern serpent 
is the honest and straightforward one of securing as 
much food as possible, and of escaping his enemies. 
In order to accomplish these two aims resource is had 
to varied. forms of deception. Sheer strength, and 
even the possession of formidable fangs with poison 
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