Volume 2

A history of British reptiles / [Thomas Bell].

  • Bell, Thomas, 1792-1880
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of British reptiles / [Thomas Bell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/56 (page 63)
    is not at all improbable, considering bow instantaneously the poison begins to affect small animals, that even in the act of seizing a mouse or bird, or any other victim, it may instil a sufficient quantity of venom into its system to paralyze and presently destroy it. Still the action by which it takes its prey is very different from that which it employs in its defensive attack, and resembles that employed by the in¬ nocuous tribes. Its favourite food consists of the smaller mammalia, field-mice, shrews, and similar little animals, of frogs also, though less commonly, and occasionally of birds. It does not always confine its voracity within the limits of its powers of deglutition; for I have in my possession a specimen of a small Viper which was taken on Poole Heath in Dor¬ setshire, in a dying state, in the act of attempting to swallow a mouse which was too large for it, the skin of the neck being so distended as to have burst in several places. The Viper, like many others of the poisonous groups of Serpents, is ovo-viviparous. I have concluded, from the examination of many specimens both of this species and of the Rattlesnake, that it is in the act of parturition that the membrane of the egg is burst. I have examined several in which the young have appeared ready to be excluded ; but have always found the investing membrane entire, although so thin and soft as to be torn by the slightest force. I give a figure of the young Viper in this state, the membrane