THE POISONOUS SNAKES OF INDIA. 59 



its prodigious numbers was furnished by Vidal * He says thai 

 in the Ratnagiri District (Kanura) alone during 6 years Govern- 

 ment rewards were paid on an average of 225,721 pboorsas per 

 annum I Later he remarks that when the Government reward was 

 raised tentatively from six pies to two annas per head, 115,1)21 were 

 paid for in 8 days (December 2nd to 10th, 1862). Again Candy in 

 the same Journal (page 85) says -that in Ratnagiri, in August and 

 September, the Mhars go out with long sticks to which forks are 

 attached and catch them in thousands for Government rewards. It is 

 an inhabitant of the plains, and becomes progressively scarcer at 

 altitudes ranging up to 5,000 feet. 5,700 feet is the highest I know of. 

 Nicholson shows t that of 1,225 poisonous snakes collected in the 

 vicinity of Bangalore (circa 3,000 feet) upon which Government rewards 

 were paid in the year 1873, only one proved to be an Echis. 



Poison. — Very conflicting opinions have been, expressed regarding the 

 virulence of JEc/iis poison. It is asserted by many that death is an ex- 

 tremely rare sequel to its bite, but I think there can be no doubt that 

 fatalities are much more frequent than many suppose. Vidal, whose 

 paper in the Bombay Natural History JournalJ is a most valuable con- 

 tribution to the literature on this species, states that be found records of 

 62 fatal cases treated in the Civil Hospital at Ra,tnagiri in the year 

 1878. He estimated that about 20 per cent, of the cases of Echis bite 

 proved fatal, .and remarks that the poison is slow, death occurring on 

 an average in 4-| days, but that some cases lingered on for 20 days. 

 He says later that the Echis is a far more potent factor than any other 

 venomous species in swelling the mortality of the Bombay Presidency. 

 He substantiates this assertion by the very significant observation that 

 in ^cA?5-ridden tracts the mortality from snake-bite far exceeds that 

 in districts where this snake is comparatively scarce. In a table 

 compiled from official returns for 8 years (1878 to 1885), for the 

 districts of the Bombay Presidency, he shows that in the districts 

 of Hyderabad, Thar and Parkar, Karachi (Sind) and Ratnagiri 

 (Kanara), where the Echis abounds, one man in 5,000 dies per annum 

 from snake-bite, whereas in the districts of Bijapur, Nasik, Ahmed- 

 nagar and Sholapur, where this snake is rare or absent, only one man 

 in 100,000 dies from snake-bite. Murray§ says "this little viper is 



* Jonrnai, Bombay Natural History Soc, Vol, V., j*. 64. 



t " Indian Snakes," p. 178. 



t Vol. v., p. 64. 



§ " ReptiUa of Sind,'^ p. 57. 



