74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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the herbage, delaying a little perhaps for an opportunity to get 

 at some birds that were chattering and hopping about on the 

 branches of a thorny, yellow-blossomed acacia. The sun was 

 blazing down fiercely on him as, with half -distended hood held 

 close to the ground, he slowly passed through the leaves and 

 flowers. For a few minutes I watched his movements through 

 my binocular glass ; but, fearing he might notice me and escape 

 into some hole, I picked up my six-foot hunting stick and rushed 

 toward him, intending to press his head to the ground with it, 

 and then take him by the neck with my hand. He saw me com- 

 ing, and, like a valiant warrior that knew his power, he faced 

 round and stood erect with expanded hood and quivering tongue 

 ready to receive me. His bright black eyes sparkled with ener- 

 getic defiance, and every fiber of his being was electrified with 

 excitement. While I was yet ten feet away he struck toward me 

 with such force that the impetus carried him flat to the ground. 

 In trying to get my stick across his neck he dodged it, and it came 

 instead across the middle of his body. At this moment he was 

 between me and the sun, with about five feet between his face 

 and mine. I looked into his eyes and held him down firmly. His 

 rage seemed redoubled. He leaned backward to make a more 

 vigorous dash at me, and as he struck forward the mouth partially 

 opened, and two tiny streams of venom shot from his fangs as 

 from a syringe, one of them catching me on the face just beneath 

 the eye. Had it gone a little higher up I should have been 

 blinded for months, and perhaps had my sight permanently in- 

 jured. This unexpected attack made me hasten the capture ; so, 

 getting his neck pressed down to the ground with the stick, I soon 

 had him grasped in my hand just behind the head in such a way 

 that he couldn't possibly turn to bite me which he made every 

 effort to do for some minutes afterward. Taking him home with 

 much satisfaction I made him thereafter my fellow-lodger. 

 While living in his cage, I observed him many times squirt the 

 venom from his fangs against the glass of its front. Thenceforth 

 my doubts about spitting snakes were removed. 



In order to understand how it is that he can eject the venom 

 as high as a person's face which we never hear of the viperine 

 snakes doing it is well to consider carefully the approximate 

 difference in the fangs of the cobra and those of the rattler. 

 Snakes of the class ViperidcB can and do under certain circum- 

 stances eject the venom somewhat similarly, but their methods 

 of striking are more deliberate usually, and instead of the first 

 and more copious discharge being thus lost, as is often the case 

 with the cobra, it is, on the contrary, injected into the veins 

 of enemy or prey. This premature squirting out of the fluid 

 in the cobra is not to be taken as a voluntary act. It has 



