In the preface of his book we read: ‘If Reflexion be made on the many Wonders that are found in the Body of this Animal’ (the viper), ‘it will be easily granted that it cannot be inquir’d into with too much Exactness: and that it is not a Work that can be finish’t at one or two Sittings.’
This little digression from the rattlesnake is not without its object; for from this correspondence through the Philosophical Transactions we may date the birth of ophiological science in England; and the reader will be able to place himself on that standpoint in order to reciprocate the kind of interest with which such an entirely strange and as yet unknown serpent as a rattlesnake was received a short time afterwards.
In vol. x. 1676, there is ‘An Account of Virginia, its Situation, Temperature,’ etc., communicated by Mr. Thomas Glover, ‘an ingenious Chirugion that hath lived some years in the Country.’
This gentleman tells us of the climate and productions of the new colony, not omitting those of the animal and vegetable kingdoms; among the various strange creatures which he describes in the crude language of the time are five or six sorts of snakes, amongst which ‘the Rattlesnake is the most remarkable, being about the bigness of a Man’s Legg, and for the most part a yard and a half long. He hath a Rattle at the End of his Tail, wherewith he maketh a Noise when any one approacheth nigh him: which seemeth to be a peculiar Providence of God to warn People to avoid the Danger; for this Creature is so venomous that the Bite of it is of most dangerous Consequence, unless they make use of the proper Antidote, of which I shall take occasion to speak somewhat hereafter.’
Such accounts, coupled with the interest awakened in the members of the Royal Society by the Florentine experimentalists, caused the first arrival of a rattlesnake in England to be a grand era in ophiological annals; and with its eventful appearance began its scientific history.
The published records of the Philosophical Transactions again perpetuate the impressions it created, and also many collateral points of interest.
A paper entitled Vipera Caudisona Americana; or, The Anatomy of a Rattle-Snake, was read by Dr. Edward Tyson, of the Royal Medical College of London, in 1683; who dissected one at the repository of the Royal Society in Jan. 1682. (The above scientific name is erroneously attributed to Laurenti, 1768.)
That nothing of much value to science was previously known about the reptile we gather from Dr. Tyson’s introductory words. ‘It were mightily to be wisht that we had the most compleat account of so Curious an Animal. This which we Dissected was sent to Mr. Henry Loades, a merchant in London, from Virginia, who was pleased not only to gratify the Curiosity of the Royal Society, in showing it them alive, but likewise gave it them when dead.’
Thus did Mr. Loades unconsciously immortalize himself in the history of rattlesnakes. Merchants in those days were not F.Z.S.’s; and it is probable that he thought of nothing beyond ingratiating himself with the members of a learned Society by presenting them with a ‘serpente’ dead, whose ‘Bell’ had excited their curiosity when living; and he little dreamed that the origin and use of this strange bell would not be determined two hundred years afterwards.
Says Dr. Tyson: ‘I find the inward parts so conformable to those of a Viper that I have taken the liberty of placing it in that Classe and (since it has not that I know of any Latine Name) of giving it that of Vipera Caudisona: for as I am informed by Merchants ‘tis Viviparous, and the Epithet sufficiently differences it from those that have no Rattle.’