‘The same species,’ that is, two anacondas or two cobras! ‘A mistranslation,’ one naturally decided, and proceeded to consult the original. But no. The translator had faithfully and unquestioningly followed the original French; but the fact was so irreconcilable that I sought Dr. Günther’s kind assistance in comprehending the passage. ‘Evidently an oversight. Manifestly impossible,’ that learned authority at once decided. (As Schlegel stands high as a scientific ophiologist, the misprint is pointed out for the benefit of future students.) Thus lengths, _as to the number of vertebræ_, vary in species of the same genus, but _not_ in ‘individuals of the same species.’ And this alone is sufficiently perplexing. For example, we read in one work that a rattlesnake has 194 vertebræ, and in another that ‘it,’ viz. ‘a rattlesnake,’ has 207 vertebræ. Both equally correct, because two distinct species are described. Again, Dr. Carpenter, in his _Animal Physiology_ (edition of 1872), gives a table of the vertebræ of various animals, in which ‘a python’ has 422 joints, while Owen gives ‘a python’ 291 joints, each learned anatomist having examined a different species. By these facts we comprehend what Schlegel intended to say. The little constrictors caught their finches with five feet of body at their disposal. An anaconda, with five yards of body to work with, might with equal ease coil three opossums. ‘The skeleton of a snake exhibits the greatest possible simplicity to which a vertebrate animal can be reduced,’ says Roget. It is ‘merely a lengthened spinal column.’ It is ‘simple’ in the same way that botanists call a stem simple when it has no branches, or bracts, or leaves, to interrupt its uniformity. For this reason, having no limbs, and therefore none of those bones which in quadrupeds connect the limbs to the trunk, the spine is, in unscientific language, alike all the way down; ‘_un corps tout en tronc_.’ And because those two first joints of the spine which have no ribs attached to them are in form precisely like the other joints, physiologists tell us that a snake has ‘no neck.’ By way of simplifying matters we just now called those two joints an invariable neck. But in the way of _cervical_ or neck vertebræ, however, we must bear in mind that a true anatomical neck, in the eyes of science, a snake has not. Some of the four-legged reptiles have a true neck, that is, they have cervical vertebræ which differ from dorsal, lumbar, etc. vertebræ, as we ourselves and mammals in general have; because four-legged reptiles have a breast-bone and limbs to support, and their neck varies in length. For example, a tortoise has nine cervical or neck joints, a monitor lizard six, and a salamander only one.