1903 Reptile Studies ill 



are as minutely chronicled in the scientific and popular 

 press as those of distinguished foreigners paying visits of 

 state. Nay, since the interest in travelled birds is so 

 general, imagination is sometimes allowed to come to the 

 aid of ocular evidence, and the cuckoo and nightingale 

 are gravely recorded as arriving a month or so — some of 

 these eyewitnesses are not fastidious to a week — before 

 their time. The arrival of the fish is accepted only on 

 the strength of catches in the nets or on the hook. We 

 do not at the coast say, " We saw a school of mackerel 

 this morning and a school of bass this afternoon." We 

 reckon the mackerel and bass with us when they are 

 actually brought up in the trammels or drift-nets or on 

 the lines. Seeing is believing. Little idle boys, with a 

 taste for practical joking, have before now duped serious 

 newspaper correspondents with their skilful imitation of 

 the cuckoo's plaintive note. No such imposition avails 

 with the silent fishes. He who would convince us that 

 the bass is back before its appointed time must show a 

 living bass in proof of his assertion. Even a fresh one, 

 with life extinct, would not be accepted by the scientific 

 inquirer as conclusive evidence of the return of the species 

 to any particular part of the coast. Fishmongers are many 

 nowadays, and, thanks to railway communication and the 

 rapid distribution of produce, Grimsby fish find their 

 way into Hampshire markets before the noonday sun is 

 overhead. 



Reptile Studies. 



By Gerald Leighton, M.D. 



VII. Immunity. 



In accordance with a desire expressed by some of my cor- 

 respondents, I propose to deal in this issue with the subject 

 of immunity from snake venom ; but before doing so it is 

 absolutely necessary that we should be quite clear as to what 

 is meant by that term " immunity," and I shall therefore try 



