224 VENOMS 
his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down 
the head. This gave him just one second’s purchase, and he made 
the most of it. Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken 
by a dog—to and fro on the floor, up and down, and round in great 
circles; but his eyes were red, and he held on as the body cart- 
whipped over the floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap-dish 
and the flesh-brush, and banged against the tin side of the bath. 
As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure 
he would be banged to death, and, for the honour of his family, he 
preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, aching, 
and felt shaken to pieces, when something went off like a thunder- 
clap just behind him; a hot wind knocked him senseless, and red 
fire singed his fur. ‘The big man had been wakened by the noise, 
and had fired both barrels of a shot-gun into Nag just behind the 
hood.”! 
From the experimental point of view, these stirring battles 
between mongooses and cobras only show that a mongoose of the 
size of a large squirrel makes a plucky and victorious attack upon 
a venomous reptile of the most dangerous species and of very 
large dimensions ; but it is impossible to tell with certainty whether 
the mongoose has been bitten. 
I therefore inoculated a second mongoose with 2 miligrammes 
of venom, a lethal dose for 4 kilogrammes of rabbit. The animal 
did not experience the slightest malaise. 
I then took blood from three other mongooses, by tying a 
carotid without killing the animals. This blood, mixed with 
venom or injected as a prophylactic into rabbits, exhibited an 
antitoxic power, which, though evident, was of little intensity, and 
insufficient in all cases as a certain preventative of death. All the 
rabbits that received a preventive dose varying from 2 to 7 c.c. 
of mongoose-serum succumbed to inoculation with venom, but 
with a considerable retardation (from two to five hours) as compared 
with the controls. 
“The Jungle Book,” by Rudyard Kipling. London: Macmillan and Co., 
Ltd. Reprint of 1905, pp. 153, 184. 
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