OF THE VENOM OF THE RATTLESNAKE. 65 



locally. At the sixteenth miiuite, the breathing was still jerking, but more rapid, 

 the bird crouched as if asleep, the eye natural; the pupil, it changed at all, a little 

 contracted. At the thirty-sixth minute the head fell, the eyes closed, respiration 

 became rare and labored, and the pupils contracted. Cloac temperature 104 2° F. 

 At the fortieth minute, the head was bent suddenly forward on the breast, and after 

 three such motions of a convulsive nature, respiration ceased at the forty-second 

 minute. 



P. M. Section. — The head was cut off at once, and the blood received in a cap- 

 sule. It was dark, but became red on exposure, and coagulated firmly, at the close 

 of four minutes. Nervous irritability existed feebly in the sciatic nerves, nine 

 minutes after death. Elsewhere it continued to the twelfth or thirteenth minute, 

 when a probe thrust down the spine occasioned no motion. Ten minutes after 

 death the muscles were everywhere very irritable. Thirty-three minutes after death 

 this property was present only in the thighs and the diaphragm. In both of these 

 localities it was still perceptible fifty-six minutes after death. Ten minutes later, 

 I could not feel sure of its existence. The heart, which was large and dark, ceased 

 to beat ten minutes after respiration stopped, and two minutes later had totally 

 lost all irritability to stimulus. The auricles contained a little dark blood, chiefly 

 uncoagulated, with the exception of two small and soft clots. 



Experiment. — A snake four feet long was secured and made to bite a pigeon, which 

 it seized so that one fang entered the knee. This pigeon had recovered from a former 

 bite with the loss of a portion of the pectoral muscles. It was well and active. 

 Upon its being bitten, I threw it from me, but, to my surprise, its wings were mo- 

 tionless, and it fell a dead weight on the table, and did not afterwards breathe or 

 move. Thirty seconds elapsed between the bite and the death. 



P. M. Section. -SowiQ little delay occurred, owing to the unexpected nature of 

 the death, and on exposing the heart within three or four minutes, it had ceased to 

 beat, although it responded to stimulus feebly and locally for a few minutes longer. 

 The nerves in the thigh were irritable during twenty-eight minutes. The muscles 

 everywhere lost their irritability within two hours and ten minutes. 



Cases of chronic or secondary poisoning were, naturally, rare in birds, and if 

 they survived a few hours, they frequently recovered. The following cases illus- 

 trate sufficiently well the chronic form of poisoning. 



Experiment. — Temperature 77° F. A large white pigeon was thrown into the 

 snake-box, the inmates of which seemed, for a iime, reluctant to use their power. 

 Finally a snake two feet in length bit the pigeon once in the breast, and became 

 so entangled, that bird and serpent rolled over together. On examining the wound, 

 two fang marks were found in the pectoral region, but so much of the venom had 

 been cast upon the neighboring feathers, that I presumed the wound could not be 

 rapidly mortal. Three hours after its infliction, the bird drooped a little and was 

 disposed to sleep. A few hours later this tendency had passed away, but the 

 wound was dark and swollen from effused blood. No signs of active inflammation 

 existed. On pressure, a little serous blood flowed from the wound. Within five 

 days the skin gave way and the parts beneath sloughed to the bones. At the close 

 9 



