SNAKES 347 



friend been handy with his croton oil. It is certainly 

 astonishing how easily natives of India can manage 

 to die if they make up their minds to do so, and 

 how rapidly physical depression from purely psychical 

 causes may affect them. Many years ago, and 

 whilst living in a snake-haunted garden in Alipur, 

 I was suddenly interrupted in the midst of micro- 

 scopic work by a troop of servants who invaded the 

 laboratory in order to bring in one of the saises who 

 had been bitten by a snake whilst he was at work 

 in the stables. The reptile had escaped, but, from 

 the nature of the injury, there could be little doubt 

 that the case was really one of snake-bite. At any 

 rate, the patient certainly believed so, and was in 

 an alarming state of depression. I had not then 

 heard of the virtues of croton oil, and, moreover, 

 there was none of it at hand. In the circumstances 

 it seemed necessary to do something, and, as I had 

 a bottle of absolute ether on the table, I tried what 

 a dose of it would do. A teaspoonful was accord- 

 ingly administered, and the temporarily intoxicant 

 and permanently curative results which followed 

 were equally striking and satisfactory. 



Sporting dogs are apt to come to grief where 

 cobras abound, as there is something very alluring 

 to them in the sight of a large snake when it sits 

 up nodding and snarling ; and it is often difficult to 

 come up in time to prevent the occurrence of 

 irreparable mischief. My garden in Alipur con- 



