494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ticated story of a large python having caught two wild sucking- 

 pigs simultaneously, crushing both with the same coil of its neck. 

 In the case of the python mentioned above, which was killed by 

 the horns of the buck that it had swallowed, the snake must have 

 been able to break all the bones of the body, but the stag's horns 

 were probably too sharp and pointed to be easily crushed, and the 

 snake rashly took the chance of digesting them in its stomach. 

 No stories of a python killing a man ever came to my knowledge, 

 but one of the keepers at the Calcutta Zoological Gardens had his 

 arm much injured one morning by a python coiling itself on it 

 and squeezing it severely before the man could be rescued. 



It has been mentioned that large rewards are paid throughout 

 India for killing venomous snakes. The actual number of snakes 

 for which rewards were paid in 1886 was 417,596, and the sum 

 paid was 25,360 rupees, which is a little more than a penny each 

 in the depreciated silver currency. These rewards are almost in- 

 variably paid, or ought to be paid, by the English magistrates 

 themselves, after examining the dead snakes. Numerous attempts 

 are made to pass off harmless snakes as poisonous snakes ; and a 

 highly educated native official will rarely condescend to allow a 

 dead snake to come too closely between the wind and his nobility, 

 to enable him to distinguish between the poisonous and the non- 

 poisonous snakes. If the rewards were not paid by an English 

 officer, a considerable portion of them would probably be inter- 

 cepted by unscrupulous native subordinates before they reached 

 the man who killed the snake. 



When the Duke of Argyll was Secretary of State for India, he, 

 as a student of natural history, took a special interest in the ques- 

 tion of killing poisonoiis snakes. And there came to him one day 

 at the India Office the cunning inventor of a machine called an 

 asphyxiator, by which it was easily demonstrated that the snakes 

 could be killed in large numbers in the holes in which they dwell 

 in India. It was not difficult to show to his grace that when the 

 asphyxiator was applied to a rabbit-hole the rabbit must either 

 bolt or be suffocated. The snake would be treated in the same 

 way as a rabbit. So the duke ordered some twenty asphyxiators, 

 and sent them out to different parts of India. It happened that I 

 was employed near Calcutta, and the Government of Bengal were 

 pleased to order me to make a trial of the consignment of asphyx- 

 iators, which they regarded as so many white elephants. The 

 asphyxiators were unpacked, and the instructions which accom- 

 panied them were read. There was a sort of fire-box in which a 

 pestilently smelling paper was to be burned. There was a wheel 

 to be turned, so as to send the smoke from the burning paper 

 through a funnel into a long nozzle which was to be inserted into 

 the snake's hole. This, it will be seen, required the services of two 



