This scholarly anatomist had evidently devoted much careful labour to the task of hunting up all the literature that could throw any light on his much-prized specimen. He had no doubt been one of those ‘animated’ by the Florentine savants, and had made himself acquainted with all the viperine characters. He had doubtless read all that had already appeared in the Philosophical Transactions, and also the narratives of such voyageurs as Hakluyt, Hernandez, Piso, and Marcgravius.
Among the useful results of his researches he is able to give us many, we may say most, of its vernaculars in the countries of the New World settled by Europeans up to that date; and as in subsequent books of travel we hear of the rattlesnake frequently under these vernaculars, until, as of later years, its ordinary English name has been familiar to all, we have had a good deal to thank him for, were it only this.
In addition to the authors already named, he gives us Guliemus Piso, Johnston, Merembergius, and ‘others that have wrot of it, and its anatomy, under the names of Boigininga or Boiginininga and Boiquira, which are its Brazile Names. By the Portuguese it is called Casca vela and Tangador: by the Dutch, Raetel Sclange; by those of Mexico, Teutlaco-cauehqui or Teuhtlacotl zauhqui, i.e. Domina Serpentum: and from its swift motion on the Rocks like the wind, Hoacoatl.’
Minutely and scientifically was that ‘viper with the sounding tail’ dissected and studied out by Dr. Tyson just two hundred years ago; and the excellent illustrations with which his description was elucidated were subsequently used in many first-class physiological works.
Not even the ‘pit’ escaped the notice of that nice anatomist,—the ‘nasal fosse,’ or ‘sort of second nostril,’ as it was for a long while called,—and its use conjectured, and which has given to a very large group of venomous serpents the name of ‘pit vipers,’ the peculiar orifice not being confined to the American Crotalus alone (see chap. xxi.).
‘Between the nostrils and eyes are two other orifices which at first I took to be Ears,’ he tells us, speaking of this ‘pit,’ ‘but after found they only led into a Bone that had a pretty large cavity, but no perforation.’ He had seen that vipers—the European vipers which he had previously known—had not these orifices. Then he comments on the great Provision of Nature in furnishing the strong, smooth ‘belly scales,’ (see illustration, p. 193), and the ‘very long trachea of 20 inches. Nature is mightily provident in supplying them with Air, in bestowing on them so large a Receptacle for receiving it.’
Tyson quotes from the ‘contests between the noble Italian Redi, and the Frenchman M. Charas,’ as to the source of the poison in vipers, and makes discoveries for himself, as for instance the mobility of the jaw in elevating and depressing the fang, the structure of the teeth, and various other matters which in this book are discussed in their several chapters, but which were then for the first time scientifically described in English by Tyson.
True that a little traditional gossip about the rattle, which he had gathered from less competent sources, creeps in towards the conclusion of the paper. While the learned M.D. writes from his own observations and scientific knowledge, he affords valuable information; and we can dispense with the hearsay of the day. However, all honour be to Dr. Tyson of two hundred years ago, who was the first to give us ‘The Anatomy of the Rattlesnake,’ and its first scientific name.
As the two American continents became more widely known to Europeans, and Englishmen were seized with a desire to visit the new colonies, books of travels and descriptions multiplied too rapidly for even a passing mention in these pages; though wherever the slightest approach to natural history was included, the rattlesnake figured conspicuously. Of those works frequently quoted by naturalists, Seba’s Rerum Naturalium Thesauri in 1735, of four ponderous volumes, containing text in both Latin and French, and profusely illustrated, must not be omitted, though about the Crotalus he has not much new to tell us. He quotes Tyson and others, and explains that the many nearly similar names are ‘selon la difference de prononciation des Bresiliens, qui la nomme aussi Boiquira;’ and he thinks all these names ‘ne désignent qu’une seule et même vipère.’ To these various titles of ‘one and the same viper,’ we shall refer again in chap. xxiii. To the list he adds that the English call it ‘rattlesnake;’ the French, ‘serpent à sonnettes;’ and Latin authors, Anguis crotalophorus (or the rattle-bearing snake). He also gives us another Mexican name, ‘Ecacoatl, qui signifie le Vent, parce qu’elle rampe avec une extrème vitesse sur les rochers.’