CHAPTER XXII.
THE XENODONS.
AND MY ‘DISCOVERY.’
THOUGH there are only about eight species that have a legitimate right to this patronymic, there are—as my readers have seen in chap. xix.—great numbers of ‘strange-toothed’ snakes that have a zoological, or rather a dentitional right to it. The present chapter, however, will comprise only a few of those most nearly allied to the recognised Xenodons, which with Heterodon must occupy some pages.
The Xenodons have an especial interest, not only on account of their remarkable dentition, but their vernacular names, which in Brazil, where these snakes are common, have led to much and frequent confusion. This can be remedied only after considerable lapse of time, for the confusion has unfortunately been disseminated in print, and the vernaculars, confused by local prejudices, still obtain. The incident of my own first acquaintance with a Xenodon will in part explain the kind of puzzle which prevails; and a little personal gossip about this may, I trust, be tolerated.
A snake mentioned by a number of writers and travellers as the Jararaca had plagued me long and terribly, from the contradictory accounts of it. What is this Jararaca? And is it the same as the Iarraracca or the Ibiracua or the Iraracuassa or the Shiraraca, or several other nearly similar names which appear in books about Brazil. Had one gone straight to Gray or Dumeril, the recognised and scientific name for it could have been ascertained at once; but we do not so readily find out which are the right books to pounce upon, nor had I in those days learnt the necessity of trusting to scientific works only for the unravelling of travellers’ tales; but I hunted in dictionaries and encyclopedias and travels and those old authors again, but with no better success.
In Wallace’s Travels in the Amazon we read: ‘Hanging up under the eaves of our shed was a dried head of a snake which had been killed a short time before. It was a Jaráraca, a species of Craspedocephalus, and must have been of formidable size, for its poison fangs, four in number, were nearly an inch long.... The bite of such would be certain death.’