THE HYPODERMA TIKOSYRINGOPHOROI. 



195 



country (which of course it does not), then by the expen- 

 diture of the moiety more or less of a lakh of rupees, 

 Government may be considered to have saved the life of 

 one man out of the one hundred and eighty millions of 

 India. Precious man ! I wonder who he is ! And, while 

 money is thus thrown away, the trees all over the country 

 remain to this day unprovided with lightning-conductors, 

 in open disregard of the known fact that men (and bullocks 

 too) are sometimes struck while standing under trees during 

 a thunderstorm ! 



Of all our frontier tribes snakes are pre-eminently un- 

 sociable, and avoid us so anxiously that we see very little 

 indeed of them, except in the baskets of snake charmers ; 

 and of those we do meet only one in many is venomous. 

 You may distinguish a venomous one at once by opening 

 its mouth and running a penknife or a small flat bit of 

 stick over the teeth of the upper jaw. This will raise the 

 poison fangs, which generally lie folded down on the jaw. 

 Of course all this is looked upon by all the servants as 

 " fatuous flapdoodle." They are not much disposed to 

 believe in non-venomous snakes, and at any rate, one 

 which has had the honour of being killed by master is, ipso 

 facto, almost certain to be a do guntaivalla, which means 



