That day there was but one direction to which my ophidian compass directed my steps, viz. the British Museum; and several days were spent there hunting every possible book to find any mention of _Xenodon’s_ moveable teeth, but in vain. Surely a feature so exceptional would have been described had it been observed. Pardon, kind reader, these many words about ‘so small an affair;’ but you who are naturalists know the peculiar charm of finding ‘something new,’ producing, as Charles Kingsley described, ‘emotions not unmixed with awe,’ that among the happy memories of study or of travel ‘stand out as beacon points.’ It was my great ambition to add ‘something new’ to science. But here was I with a secret ‘discovery,’ and not knowing what to do with it. And ‘if anything should happen’ to _Xenodon_ meanwhile! Then the keeper would be reprimanded. Plainly, courtesy demanded that the secretary of the London Zoological Society should receive an explanation of my infringement of rules; therefore, in a letter to him, I described _Xenodon’s_ whole history. I also wrote a detailed account of _Xenodon_ to a friend who edited a zoological publication, under the delusion that I should be invited to contribute a full, true, and particular account of these wonderful teeth to half the zoological journals of Europe! ‘First observed by C. C. H.!’ But no! Weeks of wondering suspense passed by. Then everybody went ‘out of town.’ On meeting Dr. Günther one day at the British Museum, I told him what I had seen. ‘The teeth or the jaw moves?’ he asked catechetically. That I could not explain, as it was precisely what one wished to ascertain. ‘You must dissect that snake,’ he said, adding that he had had no time to examine it yet. All this was duly reported to my Brazilian correspondent, who with a generous impulse promised to send me ‘the very first _Xenodon_’ he got. Alas! as I told him, it was useless to give it to _me_, who could neither kill nor cut up snakes. He did not inform me whether he, also, had observed any mobility in the ‘fangs;’ so I could not yet flatter myself that I had ‘added to science’ in any way. Professor Halford, when in England, had dissected the head of the dead specimen at the Zoological Gardens (the supposed _Jarraracca_) for poison glands, but of course found none; and I trusted to some scientific friend ‘happening by’ who would further examine its maxillary bone and report to me; but ophiological anatomists do not present themselves every day. Dr. Stradling was absent; so unless other enthusiasts proceed to an examination before this page meets the public eye, there will still remain these ‘strange-toothed’ maxillaries inviting dissection.