338 THE SNAKES OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
rush off with all speed for the nearest possessor of a Snake stone. 
It is in these cases practically impossible for it to be applied 
within five minutes or so, therefore even admitting it possessed 
the virtues attributed to it, the venom would already have 
entered the general circulation, and no amount of suction at the 
site of the bite would draw it out again. 
The belief in Snake stones, the application of the palpitating 
flesh of fowls and pigeons to the site of the bite, and other 
popular remedies are dangerous delusions. 
When the Dutch first settled at the Cape and established a 
Station there as a sort of half-way house in their East Indian 
trade, which was conducted by the East Indian Netherland’s 
Company, sometime about the year 1652, they brought a few 
of these Snake stones from the Indies, principally Malabar. 
Some of these stones are, to the present day, in the possession 
of old Boer families, whose faith in their efficacy for the cure of 
snake bite is unshakable. 
SWALLOWING SNAKE VENOM. 
It is a general belief amongst the natives, and a large section 
of the colonists of South Africa, that, if snake venom is swallowed . 
it will confer immunity to snake bite. In consequence the 
pigmy Bushmen, Hottentots, and Kafirs, after killing a venomous 
snake, cut out its venom glands and swallowed them. 
I have met many colonists who were so sure of their immunity 
that they offered to allow me to inject them with snake venom. 
The offers certainly were tempting, but my conscience and the 
law would not permit it. 
At intervals during the past ten years or so I have fed various 
species of animals, domestic and otherwise, on the venoms of 
different kinds of South African snakes. When any of these 
creatures were bitten by a snake or injected with its venom by 
means of a hypodermic syringe, they died just as rapidly as 
animals which had not been fed upon snake venom. 
The following is one instance from a score in my note-book. 
An adult Cape jackal, the size of a spaniel, was fed for six weeks 
with Puff Adder venom. Every second day half a dozen Puff 
Adders were forced to bite a lump of raw meat, which was imme- 
diately afterwards given to the jackal. On three occasions the 
