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Remembering what Frank had told him about these gliding reptiles, Will was careful not to bother with them; for in all probability they were water moccasins, whose bite, if not so deadly as that of the diamond-back rattler, would cause a wound that might never heal, since it seems to put a certain poison into the flesh that brings about a running sore. Perhaps he ought to go back.
Then she proclaimed in important tones: "It had broad, alternating rings of black and red, the distinguishing marks of the coral snake, one of the seventeen poisonous reptiles out of the one hundred and eleven species of snakes found in the United States. It reared up and menaced me with its great, wicked "
There, too, under the banner of the Bearnese, that other historian of those sanguinary times, who had fought on almost every battle-field where tyranny and liberty had sought to smite each other dead, on French or Flemish soil, and who had prepared his famous political and military discourses in a foul dungeon swarming with toads and rats and other villainous reptiles to which the worse than infernal tyranny of Philip II. had consigned him for seven years long as a prisoner of war the brave and good La Noue, with the iron arm, hero of a hundred combats, was fighting his last fight.
Here and there its traces will be amply registered on patches of softer ground, but for the most part they will be entirely lost on the firmer ground. So it is with the fossil record of life. Only in certain special conditions are the passing forms buried and preserved. A closer examination of these early reptiles may be postponed until we come to speak of the "age of reptiles."
The evidential value of the facts I have brought forward in this Lecture must be neither over nor under estimated. It is not historical proof of the occurrence of the evolution of birds from reptiles, for we have no safe ground for assuming that true birds had not made their appearance at the commencement of the Mesozoic epoch.
This spot is called Snake Hill, from two snakes having once been discovered and killed here, a fact which shows how idle are the rumours of the prevalence of poisonous reptiles in the island. It is a rare thing to meet with them, and I have seen one or two collectors who had abandoned in despair the idea of doing so.
Thus the chalk contains remains of those strange flying and swimming reptiles, the pterodactyl, the ichthyosaurus, and the plesiosaurus, which are found in no later deposits, but abounded in preceding ages. The chambered shells called ammonites and belemnites, which are so characteristic of the period preceding the cretaceous, in like manner die with it.
"Did the snakes take up their quarters in the valley for the purpose of being near fresh water for about nine months in the year?" Mr. Brown only shook his head, and said that he was not versed in "snakeology," but thought that if the reptiles remained in the valley, it was a sign that they liked to take a drink occasionally, and proposed that we should descend.
"I have always insisted, Smith," I cried, "that there was danger! What of poisoned darts? What of the damnable reptiles and insects which form part of the armory of Fu-Manchu?" "Familiarity breeds contempt, I suppose," he replied. "But as it happened none of those agents was employed. The very menace that I sought to avoid reached me somehow. It would almost seem that Dr.
The amusement, however, could not prevent his thoughts from returning to the positive facts that he was imprisoned; that in place of passing the day in cooking and eating duyker, he had been fasting and fretting in a dark, dirty pit, in the companionship of loathsome reptiles. His mind now expanding under the exercise of a startled imagination, he became apprehensive.
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