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Updated: May 20, 2025
Travellers unacquainted with the reptiles which haunt the wilds of America, on first seeing a whip-snake rapidly approaching, will, with sensations of alarm, urge on their steeds to escape for it appears fully capable of springing up and inflicting mortal injury; but, from having no fangs, it is unable to harm any one.
The real shrew is like the puff-adder or the whip-snake she tries to bite impartially all round; and she is often able to bite in comparative silence, but with a most deadly effect. The vulgar shrieker is a deplorable source of mischief, but she cannot match the reticent stabber who is always ready, out of sheer wickedness, to thrust a venomed point into man, woman, or child.
I remember a terrible fright a large picnic party, at which I assisted, was thrown into while lunching in the garden of a villa, almost in the town of Rio, by a lady jumping up from her seat with a deadly whip-snake hanging on her dress. I once myself sat on an adder who put his fangs through the woollen stuff of my inexpressibles and could not escape.
There is an infinite variety of lizards, the most noted of which is the iguana, which frequently attains a length of four feet; and its flesh is here, as in other parts of the continent, esteemed. There are many varieties of serpents, some of which are harmless. Of the venomous species, there are the golden snake, the whip-snake, and the tamagas the bite of which is considered deadly.
Paul in Melita, warming his innocent hands at the fire of dry branches here kindled for him, that miracle of a venomous serpent is this that has fixed itself upon his finger? To Friedrich Wilhelm's enchanted sense it seems a bird-of-paradise, trustfully perching there; but it is of the whip-snake kind, or a worse; and will stick to him tragically, if also comically, for years to come.
When this creature springs his rattle, you would think, from the noise it makes, there was something in it; but you have only to examine the instrument from which the noise proceeds, and you will find it typical of a critic's tongue, a shallow membrane, empty, voluble, and seated in the most contemptible part of the creature's body. "The Whip-Snake.
The most venomous of Australian snakes are the death-adder, fortunately a very sluggish variety; the tiger-snake, a most fierce serpent, which, unlike other snakes, will actually turn and pursue a man if it is wounded or angered; the black snake, a handsome creature with a vivid scarlet belly; and the whip-snake, a long, thin reptile, which may be easily mistaken for a bit of stick, and is sometimes picked up by children.
We waded stream after stream under the bamboo clumps, and in one of them we saw swimming a green rigoise, or whip-snake, which must have been nearly ten feet long.
A very beautiful snake found in the cool forests is green with a broad black band on each side of the hinder half of the body and tail, the green scales being margined with black. Another snake of the same length is a handsome green whip-snake, graceful in its movements, but ferocious and aggressive in its habits, although quite harmless. The ordinary cobra is not uncommon.
There is something frightful in the disposition of certain ophidians, as the whip-snake, which darts at the eyes of cattle without any apparent provocation or other motive. It is natural enough that the evil principle should have been represented in the form of a serpent, but it is strange to think of introducing it into a human being like cow-pox by vaccination.
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