55 

 CHAPTER VIII. 



SOME GENERAL EEMARKS ABOUT SNAKES. 



I think that most of the interest aroused by snakes is due 

 to the power some of them possess of dealing death — swift, 

 silent and terrible. On this account they, not unnaturally, 

 inspire a feeling of dread and horror. 



However, not all poisonous snakes are deadly. Of the 

 poison of the coral snakes little or nothing is known. They 

 probably are quite incapable of killing a man. Most of the 

 pit- vipers are incapable of inflicting a deadly wound on man. 

 The Banded krait of Burma is probably not, as a rule, fatal to 

 man. The common krait is a deadly snake and so is Russell's 

 viper, and unfortunately the cobra, one of the commonest of 

 all snakes, is very deadly. 



The actual danger from snakes is not very great. I am 

 sure that the statistics published concerning deaths from 

 snake-bite are very far from being accurate, but even if they 

 were correct the death-rate of the Indian population from 

 snake-bite would be very small, and among Europeans death 

 caused by snake-bite is very rare indeed. 



In estimating the value of cures for snake-bite we must 

 consider several points. All snakes are not poisonous, and as 

 very few people can tell a poisonous from a non-poisonous 

 snaket the person cured may have been bitten by a harmless 

 snake. Again, all poisonous snakes are not fatal to man ; and 

 most important of all, a deadly snake does not always inflict a 

 fatal wound. 



The snake may not be *' in good form " for killing, or he 

 may have just previously bitten something else and exhausted 

 his poison or he may get his teeth in and yet inject no 

 poison. There is a case on record in which four men were 

 bitten by the same krait ; the first three died but the fourth 

 recovered. 



