512 THE “SNAKES .OF~ SOUTH \AERIGA: 
have developed full size and hatched within the body. The young 
would have been born in the early autumn. 
Snakes are often infested with intestinal worms. On several 
occasions I have removed a score or more of slender wiry-looking 
worms, three to four inches long, from the stomachs of Puff 
Adders. 
A mother, even if suffering in a slight degree from snake 
venom poisoning, should not attempt to suckle her infant, else 
it may die in convulsions. The reason is, that the digestive 
fluids of an infant have not the power of chemically changing 
the venom. 
Statistics show that the mortality among the people of India 
in the year 1910 from bites by snakes amounted to the great 
total of 22,478. This was owing to extra heavy rains flooding 
the jungles and other favourite haunts of the serpents. They 
were, consequently, driven out upon the open plains and hillsides 
frequented by mankind. Statistics show that in India, for every 
one hundred persons bitten by venomous snakes, an average of 
twenty-five to thirty die. The average time the venom takes 
to kill is from two to twelve hours. 
The dreaded Hamadryad (Naja bungarus) of India has been 
known to bite a full-grown elephant which, in consequence, 
died in three hours. 
I made sixteen Puff Adders bite the covered top of a wine- 
glass, each snake delivering one full bite. The result was eighty 
drops of venom, which averages five drops per snake. Two 
drops is usually a fatal dose for a healthy man. Therefore the 
sixteen Puff Adders shed sufficient venom to kill forty men. 
When dried, the venom weighed a little over a gramme, viz. 
I‘Il grammes. 
There are fewer deaths from snake bite in South Africa than 
in India, because the population is less dense, not because the 
snakes are less venomous. As the population increases so will 
the death rate from snake bite be proportionately great, if the 
people will persist in pinning their faith to the various popular 
so-called antidotes. 
The Ancient Egyptians worshipped the Cobra (Naja haje), 
recognizing that it kept the rats from becoming a plague. The 
snake was allowed to live and breed unchecked in their cornlands. 
The effigy of this Cobra is engraved on monuments and stones, 
