CANNIBAL COBRAS. 179 
attacks and overcomes the cells in the nerve centres of the brain, 
causing rapid paralysis and death. True, the Mungoose, 
Muishond, and Meercat attack him at times, and succeed in over- 
coming and devouring him. He is never afraid of them. With 
a third of the anterior part of his body erect, he boldly and 
defiantly faces them and fights on till death overtakes him. 
When on the prowl for provender, a hungry Cobra will attack 
and devour any snake he may meet. So bold, fierce and strong 
is he, that he is able to overcome and swallow a full-grown Puff 
Adder, as seen in the illustration. Lying still as if dead, he keeps 
a sharp watch with his shiny black eyes upon the beaten track 
of a field rat or Vley Otomys. The rat, all unconsciouss of 
danger, trots along his usual road on his quest for food, when, 
without a second’s warning, he receives a blow on the back. 
Instantly a stinging pain shoots through his network of nerves ; 
he cries out, attempts to escape, but a deadly numbness _ grips 
him, and he is dead. 
The bare-legged Kafir, wending his way along one of those 
well-known, single-file, native foot tracks across the bush-veld, 
his mind maybe full of the prospective delights of a beer drink 
and feast of meat at a neighbouring kraal where a wedding is in 
progress, feels a prick upon his calf, followed instantly by a sharp 
burning pain. With a hoarse yell he leaps into the air, glances 
back, sees a Cobra in menacing attitude reared in the grass 
adjacent to the path. A benumbing sense of terror seizes the 
man. He staggers off to the nearest kraal, and collapses in a 
more or less paralysed condition. If the Cobra has succeeded 
in delivering a full bite, then there is no hope for him. He is 
doomed. If not, and if his constitution is able to put up a 
successful fight against the paralysing power of the venom, he 
eventually recovers, and ever afterwards extols the virtues of 
some ‘‘ cure’ which the hastily summoned native medicine-man 
has given him to swallow, or applied to the bitten part. 
When spring is advancing into summer, the Cobra joins his 
mate. The gravid female seeks out some suitable spot such as a 
crevice among the tangled roots of trees, the nest hole of a 
Starling or Kingfisher in a bank, a rat or mole hole in the ground, 
in the hollow interior parts of an old sod fence, under decaying 
vegetation, manure heaps, or in the thatch of houses. There 
she deposits her batch of eggs, and departs. In due time they 
