32 THE SNAKES OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
Tom at my heels, when a Puff Adder let out a hiss. Tom sprang 
forward and faced the snake. Knowing he was well able to take 
care of himself, and that he was by no means a tenderfoot, I 
moved back a few paces and watched. He started by making 
feints at the snake, which induced it to strike out furiously. 
Old Tom seemed to be a mass of the finest springs. The agile 
manner in which he sprang about and avoided the fierce forward 
lunges of the snake filled me with admiration for him. After 
about fifteen minutes the snake began to tire. Tom knew it 
too, full well, for he now began to grow bolder, and struck two 
or three severe blows with his forepaw. Once more the snake 
lunged with gaping jaws and erect fangs. Missing its aim, its 
head struck the earth with a thud. It was evidently spent, for 
it made no attempt to draw back in readiness for another lunge. 
Tom quickly finished it off by delivering a smashing blow 
with his forepaw, which seemed to daze the reptile, for it allowed 
the cat to seize it by the neck without showing further fight. 
Dragging the snake’s body along, my plucky old hunter laid it 
at my feet, purring with evident pride. 
A few months after this event, Tom came home one evening 
with a tremendously swollen head. He had evidently tackled 
a snake which proved more than a match for him. We did all 
we could for him, but he died within two hours. 
SNAKES EATING EGGS. 
A story was published some years ago in a boys’ journal, of 
a Cobra which disturbed a setting hen and swallowed five of her 
eggs. The Cobra was killed, the unbroken eggs removed from 
its interior, and replaced in the nest. Those eggs, in due time, 
hatched out into fine healthy chicks. 
Unlike the generality of snake stories, this one happens to 
be true. I have the pleasure of knowing the gentleman who owned 
the hen and the eggs. He was farming in Bechuanaland, and 
had procured a setting of a specially good strain of Black Minorca 
eggs at considerable expense from Capetown. Observing the hen 
walking about the farmyard in an unusually excited condition 
and wondering why she did not return to her eggs, he got anxious, 
and went to the hen-house and peeped into the box containing 
the eggs. A large cobra, with a fierce hiss, made a ferocious lunge 
