The female lays from sixteen to twenty eggs, which are about as large as those of the Blackbird, connected by a glutinous matter in long strings or chains. They are laid in holes in banks that face the south, in dungheaps, in cucumber and melon beds; and, according to Mr. W. C. L. Martin, in the crevices of lime-kilns. They are not, in general, hatched until the following spring. The eggs are covered with a whitish, parchment-like membrane; filled with a glairy fluid, in the midst of which the embryo Snake is coiled up in a little spiral.
Family IV. Viperadæ.
(Poison-snakes.)
The curse pronounced upon that primal adversary of man, “the Serpent which beguiled Eve through his subtilty,” announced a perpetual enmity between his seed and her seed; and while this without doubt referred to “that old Serpent, the Devil,” it has had a subordinate fulfilment in that animal type under which he was represented; and the universal horror and aversion with which the venomous Serpents are regarded, is a perpetual memento of that solemn and humbling transaction with which the history of the human race commences. In the whole range of animal existence, there is none that can compare with the venomous Snakes, for the deadly fatality of their enmity; the lightning stroke of their poison-fangs is the unerring signal of a swift dissolution, preceded by torture the most horrible; the bite of the American Rattlesnake has been known to
