A snake mentioned by a number of writers and travellers as the _Jararaca_ had plagued me long and terribly, from the contradictory accounts of it. What _is_ this Jararaca? And is it the same as the _Iarraracca_ or the _Ibiracua_ or the _Iraracuassa_ or the _Shiraraca_, or several other nearly similar names which appear in books about Brazil. Had one gone straight to Gray or Dumeril, the recognised and scientific name for it could have been ascertained at once; but we do not so readily find out which _are_ the right books to pounce upon, nor had I in those days learnt the necessity of trusting to scientific works only for the unravelling of travellers’ tales; but I hunted in dictionaries and encyclopedias and travels and those old authors again, but with no better success. In Wallace’s _Travels in the Amazon_ we read: ‘Hanging up under the eaves of our shed was a dried head of a snake which had been killed a short time before. It was a _Jaráraca_, a species of _Craspedocephalus_, and must have been of formidable size, for its poison fangs, four in number, were nearly an inch long.... The bite of such would be certain death.’ With this picture of a large Brazilian serpent, drawn by such an authority as Wallace, one read in Ogilvy’s dictionary: ‘_Jararaca_. A species of serpent in America, seldom exceeding eighteen inches in length; having prominent veins on the head, and of a dusky, brownish colour, variegated with red and black spots.’ Then Webster—evidently from the same source: ‘A species of serpent in America,’—word for word the same as far as the black spots—‘very poisonous. Native name in Surinam.’ And in a newer edition, Webster, in addition, gives its scientific name, _Bothrops Jararaca_; and that it is ‘a native to (_sic_) Brazil.’ ‘Oh! if a _Bothrops_, then it is one of the _Crotalidæ_,’ was the decision arrived at. Kingsley, in his _At Last_, mentions a ‘mangrove snake, much dreaded by being so like the deadly Cascobel, viz. _Trigonocephalus jararaca_.’ Thus with our puzzle we combine a _Bothrops_ with the ‘pit;’ a _Trigonocephalus_ with the worst of the viperine heads; and according to Wallace, a _Craspedocephalus_, which, at a guess, must be that it has something rough about the head to entitle it to this specific. Few of the encyclopedias described it individually, or threw more light upon it. Worcester’s dictionary states that the Jararaca is ‘a species of venomous American serpent seldom exceeding eighteen inches;’ and gives Wright as an authority. Spix and Martin[110] in their list of venomous snakes describe _Jararacucu_, called also _Shiraraca_, as a _Bothrops_; and also a _Jararaca mirim_, a small one. Marcgravius[111] figures a _Iararaca_, a small snake of a bright red with black spots.