gratify my never quite forgotten desire to know more of this interesting poison. One day, however, a man offered me a small lot of snakes, and just then I learned of a supposed antidote invented, it was said, by the famous French herpetologist, Bibron. In fact he never did invent an antidote, and how the queer mixture of iodine and corrosive sublimate got his authoritative name is still a mystery. I began in 1859 to study the matter, and soon found that the antidote was worthless, and that no one knew much about snake venoms. Not quite a hundred years previous Fontana wrote on the poison of vipers an immortal work, and nearly another century before him there were written two quaint books,

life by pupils of the Government schools, are here grouped so as to show at a glance all the typical Indian poisonous serpents.

Twenty-four years after my first essay, the Smithsonian published1 the results of another four years of additional work on the problems which had interested me in my early life. Much of what I did in 1859 to 1862 needed no reëxamination, but new questions had arisen, and novel and accurate methods were now at our disposal. Moreover, I had been haunted for a year or more by the idea that serpent poisons might not be simple but complex, not one thing but a mixture of two or more, and that this might explain the causes of the difference be

one by Redi, 1664, and one by Charas, 1673. Both of these little volumes are still worth reading. Charas's belief in the value of volatile salt of the ashes of calcined vipers as a remedy for viper bite is an instructive exhibition of a form of medical idiocy not without modern illustrations.

My own researches were carried on in the intervals of a life of great occupation, and were published in 1862 by the Smithsonian Institution. About 1872, unaided by Government, in a climate where heat makes all labor difficult, and at a cost in the way of money and mortal risks which few can comprehend, an Indian surgeon, now Sir Joseph Fayrer, created on this subject a vast mass of material knowledge which without reward he gave to the Government of India. The illustration on this page was meant for a frontispiece to his splendid volume, but was for some reason unused and came to me as a gift from Fayrer. The snakes, drawn from

tween rattlesnake and cobra bites, and possibly give the clue to methods of successful treatment. When a maggot like this gets into the brain of a man accustomed to want to know why, it breeds a variety of troublesome pleasures. In my case it drove me once more to the laboratory, and caused me to seek the skillful aid of Dr. Edward T. Reichert, now Professor of Physiology in the University of Pennsylvania. Together we solved many perplexing problems. As some of these have for the general reader an unusual interest, I purpose to restate here a few of our results, since our large Smithsonian memoir is not likely to come before many of the readers of THE CENTURY.

It has occurred to me that in telling my story it might be well to show in popular shape how the work was done, as well as its results. To make it clearer, I must first explain the

1 "Researches on Serpent Poisons," by S. Weir Mitchell, M. D., and Prof. E. T. Reichert.

mechanism which enables the serpent to use its poison.

We have in America as venomous serpents the several species of rattlesnake, the water moccasin, the copperhead, and the beautiful coral snake, the little elaps of Florida, too small with us to be dangerous to man.

India is preeminently the home of the poisonous snakes, of which there are no fewer than fifteen genera. The cobra is most abundant, but the Ophiophagus elaps is the most dreaded, and attains at times the length of fourteen feet. Unlike the cobra and the crotalus, this serpent is viciously aggressive, and will pursue a man with activity.

Among the vipers the daboya is entitled to rank as a poisoner close to the cobra, and the crotalida are represented by a number of snakes which are somewhat less effective slayers than the cobra. While these genera are too sufficiently abundant on land, the Indian seas also abound in species belonging to the family of hydrophide. These serpents are agile and dangerous, but as yet no one seems to have made any examination of their venom, nor directly experimented to learn anything of its relative hurtfulness. Poisonous water-snakes are found in abundance on the shores of South America, and used to be

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thrown up in numbers into the paddle-wheel covers of the old side-wheel steamers. I never had the good luck to get a living specimen.

The centipede and the scorpion rank high in the popular mind as poisoners, but they are gentle apothecaries compared to the serpent.

We are in America the privileged possessors of the only other animal at all approaching the poisonous snakes in lethal vigor: it is a lizard, the Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) of Arizona. This strange creature is the only poisonous lizard known. I have heard of but one death in man from its bite, and for a long while it was looked upon by all except the Indian as harmless. Sluggish, inert, well armored with a tough, defensive skin, a feeder on birds' eggs and on insects, it is most difficult to induce this good-humored and most hideous reptile to bite at all. When once it takes hold, no bulldog could be more tenacious. The odor of its poisonous saliva is exactly like that of magnolia buds. Its bite causes no local injury, and its venom is a deadly heart poison.

All of the great family of thanatophidia have substantially the same mechanical arrangements for injecting their venom. When not in action the two hollow teeth known as fangs lie pointing backwards, wrapt in a loose

cloak-like cover, a fold of the soft skin of the interior of the upper jaw. At the base of each of these fang teeth is an opening connected with a tube running backwards under the eye to an almond-shaped gland which forms the poison. This body continuously manufactures venom, and holds in its cavity a supply for use. Over the gland runs a strong muscle,

A SNAKE STAFF.

which is ordinarily employed to close the mouth by lifting the lower jaw, to which it is made fast. A little circular muscle around a part of the duct keeps it shut and prevents waste of venom.

Let us observe what happens when the rattlesnake means mischief. He throws himself into a spiral, and about one-third of his length, carrying the head, rises from the coil and stands upright. The attitude is fine and warlike, and artists who attempt to portray always fail. He does not pursue, he waits. Little animals he scorns unless he is hungry, so that the mouse or the toad he leaves for days unnoticed in his cage. Larger or noisy creatures alarm him. Then his head and neck are thrown far back, his mouth is opened very wide, the fang held firmly erect, and with an abrupt swiftness, for which his ordinary motions prepare one but little, he strikes once and is back on guard again, vigilant and brave. The blow is a stab, and is given by throwing the head forward while the half-coils below it are straightened out to lengthen the neck and give power to the motions which drive the fangs into the opponent's flesh; as they enter, the temporal muscle closes the lower jaw on the part struck, and thus forces the sharp fang deeper in. It is a thrust aided by a bite. At this moment the poison duct is opened by the

In so complicated a series of acts there is often failure. The tooth strikes on tough skin and doubles back or fails to enter, or the serpent misjudges distance and falls short and may squirt the venom four or five feet in the

air, doing no harm. I had a curious experience of this kind in which a snake eight feet six inches long threw a teaspoonful or more of poison athwart my forehead. It missed my eyes by an inch or two. I have had many near escapes, but this was the grimmest of all. An inch lower would have cost me my sight and probably my life.

A snake will turn and strike from any posture, but the coil is the attitude always assumed when possible. The coil acts as an anchor and enables the animal to shake its fangs loose from the wound. A snake can rarely strike beyond half his length. If both fangs enter, the hurt is doubly dangerous, because the dose of venom is doubled. At times a fang is left in the flesh, but this does not trouble the serpent's powers as a poisoner, since numberless teeth lie ready to become firmly fixed in its place, and both fangs are never lost together. The nervous mechanism which controls the act of striking seems to be in the spinal cord, for if we cut

striking, and they have been on the whole much maligned.

Any cool, quiet person moving slowly and steadily may pick up and handle gently most venomous serpents. I fancy, however, that the vipers and the copperhead are uncertain pets. Mr. Thomson, the snake keeper at the Philadelphia Zoological, handles his serpents with impunity; but one day having dropped some little moccasins a few days old down his sleeve while he carried their mamma in his hand, one of the babies bit him and made an ugly wound. At present the snake staff is used to handle snakes.

I saw one October, in Tangiers, what I had long desired to observe-a snake charmer. Most of his snakes were harmless; but he refused, with well-acted horror, to permit me to take hold of them. He had also two large brown vipers; these he handled with care, but I saw at once that they were kept exhausted of their venom by having been daily teased