INTRODUCTION TO FRENCH EDITION. 
In the month of October, 1891, during the rains, a village 
in the vicinity of Bac-Lieu, in Lower Cochin-China, was 
invaded by a swarm of poisonous snakes belonging to the 
species known as Naja tripudians, or Cobra-di-Capello. 
These creatures, which were forced by the deluge to enter 
the native huts, bit four persons, who succumbed in a few 
hours. An Annamese, a professional snake-charmer in the 
district, succeeded in catching nineteen of these cobras and 
shutting them up alive in a barrel. M. Séville, the admin- 
istrator of the district, thereupon conceived the idea of 
forwarding the snakes to the newly established Pasteur 
Institute at Saigon, to which I had been appointed as 
director. 
At this period our knowledge of the physiological action 
of venoms was extremely limited. A few of their properties 
alone had been brought to light by the works of Weir 
Mitchell and Reichard in America, of Wall and Armstrong 
in India and - England, of A. Gautier and Kaufmann in 
France, and especially by Sir Joseph Fayrer’s splendidly 
illustrated volume (“The Thanatophidia of India”), pub- 
lished in London in 1872. 
An excellent opportunity was thus afforded to me of 
