A different kind of herp collection

[Chkadii]

Well, okay, with a total of one it's not much of a collection yet. But I thought you guys might find it interesting anyway!

This is a first edition print of illustrations by Benard Direxit, found in Histoire Naturelle, and I believe was published in the late 1700s.

Thinking about how far we've come in understanding reptiles within the past decade alone, I find it really interesting to see where we've come from.

The top snake is listed as "Le Boiquira" and the bottom one as "Le Bojobi," both Brazilian vernacular names. Anyone care to guess what species they are? (I have a vague idea, but don't actually know myself.)

[John1982]

Pretty cool subject for collecting. I'd guess bushmaster and emerald tree boa.

[olstyn]

Bottom one looks like an ETB (Emerald Tree Boa) to me. Top, I don't know, but it sort of looks like it has fangs; Fer de Lance?

[rlditmars]

I agree with the ETB but since the other has a rattle, I'm going to take, Rattlesnake for $600 Alex?

[Chkadii]

I also landed on ETB (also referred to as a dog-headed boa in The Universal Cyclopaedia).

The rattlesnake is a rattlesnake, but has me stumped beyond that. I was thinking Crotalus durissus, even though they have pretty consistent diamond patterns from the images I've seen. I'm assuming either there's some pattern fluctuation in locality, or there was some kind of error made between the snake and the illustration (aberrant specimen, faulty description/miscommunication, misremembering, etc.). That, or it's a timber rattlesnake and has nothing to do with Brazil as a geographic distribution at all.