198 OPHIDIANS. 
I leave every reader to make his own reflections upon the 
preceding experiments. 
The celebrated South American savant, De Caldas, in his 
writings on “The New Kingdom of Grenada” (1807, 1808) 
Says: : 
“A Noanama Indian, with whom I travelled through the 
upper country (Cundinamarca and the Cauca), showed me 
several plants used by his tribe for curing snake-bites. I ob- 
served that almost all of them belonged to the species Bes- 
leria.” | 
Several other antidotes used by the Curers might be spoken 
of in this connection, but as another part treats especially of 
their different modes of treatment, those will be referred to 
in the different methods. 
Dr. Vargas Reyes, of Bogota, has lately renewed the “ Al- 
cohol treatment,” and calls it “specific,” recommending it for 
general use. It can be safely considered a good treatment if 
adopted in time, or with little delay, but several cases in which 
it has been applied have terminated fatally, and I will cite a 
case which occurred many years ago in the northern part of 
the State of Ohio, which some of my readers will doubtless 
remember. It occurred about the year 1845, in Huron 
County. 
A blacksmith, generally drunk and exceptionally sober, and 
therefore a splendid subject for the “ Alcohol treatment,” who 
had his shop at a cross-roads, went to his forge one morning 
to work, and found a large Rattlesnake coiled up upon his 
anvil; the morning “smile” which he had undoubtedly taken 
was quite enough to put our knight of the hammer and tongs 
in a fighting mood, and no helmeted knight ever took up a 
challenge to enter the lists more readily than did he the hiss- 
ing challenge of his snakeship. 
Seizing his hammer, which was doubtless the weapon he 
