Our reptiles and batrachians : a plain and easy account of the lizards, snakes, newts, toads, frogs and tortoises indigenous to Great Britain / by M.C. Cooke ... with original figures of every species and numerous woodcuts.

  • Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt), 1825-1914.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Our reptiles and batrachians : a plain and easy account of the lizards, snakes, newts, toads, frogs and tortoises indigenous to Great Britain / by M.C. Cooke ... with original figures of every species and numerous woodcuts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    are true natives no one will doubt; but whether the Green Lizard deserves a place in our Fauna is a more open question, and is again referred to here- after. The great Gavial of the Ganges, sometimes nearly eighteen feet long, the Crocodile of the Nile, the Alligator of North America, and the Caymans of the South, are the giants of this order; but of these we have, happily, no representative. In neither of the two orders named do any of its members possess poison-bags or venomous fangs, though we happen to know that it is a firmly-rooted opinion in India that there is one or more species of lizard capable of causing death by a wound, rendered mortal either by a virulent saliva, or some other means. Such a lizard, however, is entirely unknown to scientific men, and by them the Bis-cobra is believed to be only a phantom of “ the heat-oppressed brain.” A surgeon, for many years on service in India, tells us that he knew of an instance of a man descending a well being bitten by such a lizard, that he was drawn up and indicated the position of the reptile; that a second man descended and killed the bis- cobra, which was afterwards preserved in spirits at the barrack-hospital for many years, and, finally, that the man who was bitten died in consequence in a few hours. The third order includes all the snakes, from the monstrous Boa constrictor and the dreadful Hattie-