继承者们第10集在线播放

《 继承者们第10集在线播放》

We have now arrived at the closing group of the true Carnivora; a group which, although less sanguinary in its habits than almost any of those which we have hitherto had occasion to notice, and endowed by nature with a capacity of subsisting entirely on vegetable substances, comprehends nevertheless, among the closely allied species of which it is composed, not merely the largest, but even some of the most formidable, of the carnivorous Mammalia.

If the Boas furnish the most terrible examples of the tremendous powers of destruction possessed by a few of that division of the Serpent tribe, whose bite is unattended with the effusion of venom, the Rattlesnakes afford a no less remarkable instance of the dreadful malignity of the poison with which others of the tribe are so abundantly supplied. This poison is secreted by a gland of considerable size situated beneath the eye, the excretory duct of which terminates on each side at the base of a long and tubular fang in the upper jaw, which is concealed while the animal is at rest in a fold of the gum, but is capable of being instantaneously[240] erected when he is irritated, and affords at the same time the means of inflicting the wound and of insinuating into it the deadly fluid with which it is charged. In the Rattlesnakes these two fangs are the only visible teeth implanted in the upper jaw; but behind each of them are several rudiments of others by which they are from time to time replaced. Their other