126 UTILITY AND DESTRUCTION OF REPTILES. 
pent has been exterminated within the human period, and even 
the dense population of China has not been able completely to 
rid itself of the viper. They have, however, almost entirely 
disappeared from particular localities. The rattlesnake is now 
wholly unknown in many large districts where it was extremely 
common half a century ago, and Palestine has long been, if not 
absolutely free from venomous serpents, at least very nearly so.* 
Piedmont, carried something from their nests and dropped it upon the ground 
about as often as they brought food to their young, I watched their proceed- 
ings, and found every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying 
slowworms, and, in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every instance, 
lost about two inches of the tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to 
their nestlings, and threw away the remainder. 
* Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria, and 
states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from the bite of 
a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before histime. In Pales- 
tine, the climate, the thinness of population, the multitude of insects and of 
lizards, all circumstances, in fact, seem very favorable to the multiplication of 
serpents, but the venomous species, at least, are extremely rare, if at all 
known, in that country. Ihave, however, been assured by persons very fami- 
liar with Mount Lebanon, that cases of poisoning from the bite of snakes had 
occurred within a few years, near Hasbeiyeh, and at other places on the 
southern declivities of Lebanon and Hermon. In Egypt, on the other hand, 
the cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as numerous as ever, and are much 
dreaded by all the natives except the professional snake charmers. 
The recent great multiplication of vipers in some parts of France is a sin- 
gular and startling fact. Tioussenel, quoting from official documents, states, 
that upon the offer of a reward of fifty centimes, or ten cents, a head, twelve 
thousand vipers were brought to the prefect of a single department, and that 
in 1859 fifteen hundred snakes and twenty quarts of snakes’ eggs were found 
under a farm-house hearthstone. The granary, the stables, the roof, the very 
beds swarmed with serpents, and the family were obliged to abandon its habi- 
tation. Dr. Viaugrandmarais, of Nantes, reported to the prefect of his depart- 
ment more than two hundred recent cases of viper bites, twenty-four of which 
proved fatal.—Tvistia, p. 176 et segg. According to the Journal des Débats 
for Oct. 1st, 1867, the Department of the Céte @’Or paid in the year 1866 
eighteen thousand francs for the destruction of vipers. The reward was thirty 
centimes a head, and consequently the number killed was about sixty thousand. 
A friend residing in that department informs me that it was strongly suspected 
that many of these snakes were imported from other departments for the sake 
of the premium. 
In Nature for 1870 and 1871 we are told that the number of deaths from the 
