Page:Natural History, Reptiles.djvu/157

Rh The tube thus formed communicates with the poison-bag, into which the deadly fluid is poured from glands which lie on each side of the head beneath the eye. Each consists of a number of long narrow lobes, extending from the main duct which runs along the lower border of the gland upwards and slightly backwards. Each lobe gives off smaller lobes from its sides, and each of these is subdivided into smaller secreting sacs; and the whole gland is surrounded by a membrane connected with the muscles, by whose

contraction the several lobes are pressed and emptied of the poison. This fluid is then conveyed through the duct to the poison-bag. “We may suppose,” says Professor Müller, “that as the analogous lachrymal and salivary glands in other animals are most active during particular emotions, so the rage which stimulates the venom-snake to use its deadly weapon must be accompanied with an increased secretion and great distention of the poison-glands; and as the action of the compressing muscles is contemporaneous