144 THE SNAKES OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
quite well as far as his health was concerned, and I was surprised 
to hear a few days afterwards that his death was attributed to 
the bite of the Boomslang ; I had always been under the impres- 
sion it was a case of ordinary blood-poisoning.”’ 
I have made very careful inquiry into this case, and it seems 
the gentleman at first showed no very apparent signs of constitu- 
tional disturbance, but subsequently symptoms set in very similar 
to those exhibited by Williams, viz. oozing of blood from the gums 
and extravasation of blood into the tissues on various parts of 
the body, then death. This would seem to indicate that in this 
case there was a smaller dose of venom discharged into the 
wounds than was the case with Williams, which took a longer 
period to manifest its effects. Medical men who saw the gentle- 
man before he died declare his symptoms were by no means those 
of ordinary blood-poisoning. The medical man who attended 
him informs me there is no doubt at all about the fact that he 
died of the effects of the venom of the snake which bit him. 
I closely cross-questioned Williams, and he admitted that 
within half an hour of being bitten he felt a curious, restless, 
dizzy, and languid feeling, but refused at the time to own it, think- 
ing it to be due to some other cause, and believing so fully that 
a Boomslang was perfectly harmless. However, in Williams’ 
case the symptoms were such as to leave no possibility of a doubt 
that he suffered directly and unmistakably from some extremely 
potent venom, and local medical opinion was unanimous on this 
latter point. 
THE EXPERIMENTS. 
It now became imperative to demonstrate whether Boomslangs 
were really venomous or not, as this individual case of Williams 
would not by any means be accepted by scientific men as proof 
positive. Naturalists and others handle these snakes and make 
pets of them under the belief that they are non-venomous, and, 
moreover, in the public interest this question had to be decided 
for all time, especially so as the Boomslang is one of the commonest 
of South African snakes. 
The following are the results of the experiments :— 
A large brown female Boomslang was held by the neck 
and induced to bite the bared thighs of three fowls in quick 
