HARDWICKE'S SC I £ N C E- G OSS 1 P. 



49 



THE COBEA, AND HOW I KILLED IT. 



:5>'^HERE are few 

 men who have 

 not some hobby 

 peculiar to 

 themselves : 

 some ride the 

 jli horse, and 

 seek rule over 

 their fellow -mortals; others 

 are content with humbler oc- 

 cupation, aud some will com- 

 bine both. There are eccen- 

 tric hobbies, useful hobbies, 

 and useless ditto ditto. One 

 of mine, perhaps useless in 

 some people's eyes, but always 

 interesting in my own, has 

 been, ever since I can remem- 

 ber, a mania for collecting 

 insects and stuffing birds, 

 beasts, and reptiles; ouly as an amateur would 

 do them, but still well enough to please myself. 



Sometimes I have found a difficulty in killing 

 some of the larger kinds of reptUes without injuring 

 their outward appearance. Chloroform would always 

 kill butterflies and insects very quickly, without any 

 apparent pain, but on some species it had no effect 

 whatever. 



Once I poured a quantity of it down the throat 

 of a young alligator about a yard long, which I got 

 on the banks of the Hooghly, without having the 

 desired result, and I could only kill him by taking 

 a pair of large scissors and cutting the spinal mar- 

 row at the base of the head, from inside the throat. 

 This looks like a cruel operation, but the creature 

 was dead instantly. 



About the same time, with others, I had an 

 opportunity of obtaining from a native a fine Cobra- 

 di capello. It was a handsome brute, just 4 ft. 7 in. 

 long, beautifully marked, and glancing with restless 

 eyes and agitated tongue as [the snake-charmer 

 handled it without fear. One could not help a mo- 

 mentary shudder at being in such close proximity to 

 No. 99. 



so poisonous a beast, whose bite would be death in a 

 few minutes; but the native vendors assured the 

 sahibs that the poisonous fangs had been drawn, 

 and we gradually assumed sufficient courage to 

 handle it. 



We should not have done this had we known that 

 one fang, although drawn from the socket, was still 

 in the gum. This I found there on ultimately 

 skinning it, and the tooth is now in my possession. 



The main object in buying the snake was that it 

 might be stuifed, and we accordingly set to work to 

 kill it, first pouring down its throat nearly a wine- 

 glassful of spirits of ammonia ; and having waited 

 half an hour without observing any effect, a spoonful 

 of prussic acid was administered with a similar 

 fruitless result. The poor brute was then handed 

 over to me, and 1 carried him away in a small flat 

 wicker basket, in which he was coiled. 



It was now my turn to see what could be 

 done with him, aud I thought drowning would 

 dispose of him effectually without affecting the 

 colour of the skin. 



To carry out this idea I put him, basket and all, 

 into my earthen bath (a large chatty about 3 ft. 

 deep), with a weight on the lid 'of the basket to 

 keep it at the bottom, and there left him'for full three 

 hours until late in the evening. I then took him 

 out, and considered him quite dead, as he was 

 handed round amongst us as perfectly limp as a yard 

 and a half of tape. 



Purposing to skin him in the morning before the 

 sun was up, I put a noose round his tail and hung 

 him to a nail in my bath-room bulkhead, to let the 

 water run from his mouth ; and here he dangled, 

 when I turned in, as straight as a line. 



Soon after daylight I was up to commence opera- 

 tions on his snakeship, and opened my bath-room 

 door to unhang him, when, instead of the limpid 

 creature I had left on the previous night, he had 

 coiled himself into a knot, and was spitting at me 

 from the centre of it with his forked tongue, shooting 

 it in and out, and his eyes lighted up with a fierce 

 and angry glare. . 



