346 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



extent, perhaps even deatli, niidoiibtedly cause*! by the bites of rats, 

 dogs, eats, cows, hoivses, and even man hinisell'. 



It is clear then that we can not always conclude that a snake belongs 

 to a venomous kind from the fact that its bite results in symptoms of 

 poisoning. Modern science shows us that such results in other animals 

 are due to the presence in their saliva of those minute organisms, the 

 bacteria whose name at least is nowadays so well known to everybody. 

 The general iiublic knows these cases as blood-poisoning, the pro 

 fessional man refers to theni as cases of septicaemia. The fiict that 

 the poison of snakes is only a modified saliva should not lead anybody 

 to suppose that snake poison and the bacteria- infected saliva — though 

 both may lead to fatal results — have anything in common in their 

 nature. On the contrary, the sooner both the general public and the 

 medical practitioner understand this difference and act accordingly, the 

 better. 



When sjteaking of i)oisonous or venomous snakes, therefore, I shall 

 only refer to such snakes as are i)rovided with a specific — to them 

 ])eculiar — poison and an apparatus es|»ecially adai)ted for the introduc- 

 tion of this poison into the wound of the victim. 



The question naturally will be asked : " Which, then, are our poisonous 

 snakes"?" 



The proper answer would be that only those of our snakes are refer- 

 able to this category which are possessed of a movable or constantly 

 erect poison fang at the anterior end of the upper jaw bones, and even 

 those who, on slight intbrmatiou, profess to be well informed, would in 

 most cases admit that the above answer is correct. But it may be 

 shown that this is only partly so. 



Students of snakes have for more than fifty years kept an eye on a 

 certain category ot snakes as " suspects." 



It seems that the Dutch professor, lieinwardt, while in Java, was the 

 first to discover that certain snakes, dreaded by the inhabitants of that 

 island as venomous, are prcnided with long grooved fangs at the pos- 

 terior end of the maxillary bone. He communicated this discovery to 

 Dr. H. Boie in Ley den, who published it in 1826.* The suspicion 

 expressed by Prof. Reinwardt that this channel or groove on the 

 anterior side of these fangs might convey thefiuid from a poison gland 

 led to several important investigations, the first of which to be pub- 

 lished was Dr. Hermann Schlegel's memoir on the salivary glands of the 

 serpents with grooved teeth. t 



He came to the conclusion that inasmuch as he found the structure 

 of their glands to be similar to that of other salivaiy glands, there could 

 be no doubt that they secrete " a fluid similar to the ordinary saliva;" 

 and as "recent observations of travelers" served to show that the 

 bites of snakes with grooved teeth produce no fatal results to man, he 



*Okeiis Iris, 1826, p. 213. 



tNova Acta Acad. Leop. Nat. Cunos., Bonu, xi\, 1828 (i>\u 115-154). 



