524 SNAKES. 



danger, a boy said to him : ' No fear ; if my father is bitten, 

 he knows of an herb that will cure him.' 



Another recent authority whom we are bound to respect 

 is Schhemann. In his work Troy and its Reinams, 

 pubHshed in 1875, he writes (p. 1 17) : * We still find poisonous 

 snakes among the stones as far down as from thirty-three to 

 thirty-six feet, and I have hitherto been astonished to see 

 my workmen take hold of the reptiles with their hands and 

 play with them : nay, yesterday I saw one of the men bitten 

 twice by a viper, without seeming to trouble himself about 

 it. When I expressed my horror, he laughed, and said that 

 he and all his comrades knew there were a great many 

 snakes in this hill, and they had therefore all drunk a 

 decoction of the snake-weed, which grows in the district, and 

 which renders the bite harmless. Of course I ordered a 

 decoction to be brought to me, so that I also may be safe 

 from these bites. I should, however, like to know whether 

 this decoction would be a safeguard against the fatal effects 

 of the bite of the hooded cobra, of which in India I have 

 seen a man die within half an hour. If it were so, it 

 would be a good speculation to cultivate snake-weed in 

 India.' 



A correspondent in Land and Water, signed ' R. C.,' 

 quoting Schliemann, inquired the name of this snake-weed, 

 but without eliciting information. Most of the countries in 

 which snakes abound would seem to rejoice in 'snake-weeds ' 

 and * snake-roots.' * It has pleased nature that there should 

 be nothing without its antidote,' said Pliny ; and though ' the 

 faculty ' tell us that no antidote for snake venom has as yet 

 been discovered, it nevertheless appears to be certain that the 



