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Updated: April 30, 2025
The first genus is the Crotalus, or rattlesnake proper; the second is the Caudisona, or ground-rattlesnake; the third is the Ancistrodon, or moccasin, one of the species of which is a water-snake; and the fourth is the Elaps, or harlequin snake. There is some dispute over the exact degree of the toxic qualities of the venom of the Heloderma suspectum, or Gila monster.
Sometimes, not daring to lift his head to look about him, he had to trust to his ears and his hound-like sense of smell for information as to what was going on. And sometimes it was only his tireless immobility that saved him from the stroke of a startled adder or a questioning and indignant crotalus.
There was the usual tall box with its bleached rattling tenant; there were jars in rows where "interesting cases" outlived the grief of widows and heirs in alcoholic immortality, for your "preparation-jar" is the true "monumentum aere perennius"; there were various semipossibilities of minute dimensions and unpromising developments; there were shining instruments of evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on one shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in a long cylinder of spirit, a huge crotalus, rough-scaled, flat-headed, variegated with dull bands, one of which partially encircled the neck like a collar, an awful wretch to look upon, with murder written all over him in horrid hieroglyphics.
We saw that he could easily evolve or wind himself at pleasure around the body of the latter each time compressing him with those muscular powers which have entitled him to his name `constrictor. At each fresh embrace, the body of the `crotalus' appeared to writhe and contract under the crushing influence of his sable adversary.
Both had heard the well-remembered whir at the same moment, and bounded away several steps before pausing to look back. Remarkable as it might seem, a second specimen of the crotalus, fully as large as the other, lay on the flat surface of a rock only a few inches above the ground.
Nature was before man with her anaesthetics: the cat's first shake stupefies the mouse; the lion's first shake deadens the man's fear and feeling; and the crotalus paralyzes before he strikes. He waited as in a trance, waited as one that longs to have the blow fall, and all over, as the man who shall be in two pieces in a second waits for the axe to drop.
We could see strange it appeared to us that, instead of battling head to head face to face the fangs of the `constrictor' were buried in the rattles of the `crotalus! Stranger still, the tail of the former rose and fell with a muscular and powerful impetus, whipping the latter to death! "The contest was soon ended.
Carefinotu pushed him aside at the same instant as a serpent glided beneath the herbage, and was about to strike at him. "Snakes, now. Snakes in the island, after the bears and the tigers!" he exclaimed. Yes! It was one of those reptiles well-known by the noise they make, a rattlesnake of the most venomous species: a giant of the Crotalus family!
Crotalus himself, with his tail in a muddy ditch, and the sun striking cold fire from his slit eyes as he basked his head on a warm stone beside it, could not have typified us better.
Bernard considered it necessary to get a live crotalus or two into his possession, if this were possible. On inquiry, he found that there was a certain family living far up the mountainside, not a mile from the ledge, the members of which were said to have taken these creatures occasionally, and not to be in any danger, or at least in any fear, of being injured by them.
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