no JUNGLE ISLAND 



When the vipers were transferred carefully to a 

 wire cage they were seen to be nearly half grown. 

 The grown snake reaches a length of three feet. A 

 glass dish for water had been placed in one corner 

 of the cage where' it could be filled without 

 opening the cage. We gave them grasshoppers, 

 various bugs, and bits of meat, but, like many 

 snakes in captivity, they refused to eat. They 

 usually stayed coiled, with their flat, arrow- 

 shaped heads, all too heavy for their slender bodies, 

 poised and alert to strike. 



These vipers are relatives of the dreaded 

 fer-de-lance and bushmaster, much larger poison- 

 ous snakes found more commonly on toward 

 South America. I was told of an airplane relief 

 party recently sent from Ancon to the interior 

 of Panama with antitoxin to treat a man bitten 

 by a bushmaster. 



These snakes and snake stories did not make 

 my dreams the most pleasant the night before 

 I first went to Barro Colorado. I carried in my 

 knapsack, as a matter of course, a bottle of 

 potassium permanganate and a sharp razor blade, 

 and I knew that in case of a bite I must make a 

 crisscross cut at the bitten place, after having 

 first bandaged tightly above it, then suck out the 

 poison and rub in the potassium permanganate, 

 all of which sounds simple enough. 



As a matter of fact, I did not see any snake 

 that first day, nor yet the second. It was not 



