66 THE OLD WOMAN AND THE SNAKE. 



were not tbose likely to guard against the poison of a 

 deadly reptile. This man also sickened and died, when, 

 as his ailment had been more closely watched, suspicions 

 were entertained of snake poison, the manner of the death 

 of his predecessor also referred to, and in course of public 

 conversation the fact of a combat with a rattlesnake was 

 discovered and the boot minutely examined. 



On the most close inspection it was then ascertained 

 that the snake had not only bitten, but had absolutely 

 broken off a fang or holder in the leather, and that the 

 very extreme point of the tooth had attained to the inside 

 and remained there, not protruding sufficiently to give 

 immediate pain, but by friction to cause a slight abrasion 

 of the skin, and thus the poison was infused. This story, 

 if quite correct in all its points, rather shakes the suppo 

 sition that the tooth itself without its bag of venom is in 

 nocuous ; but then there might have been sufficient poison 

 inserted into the leather with the tooth by constant fric 

 tion to have affected the system. 



The second case of the bite of a rattlesnake which was 

 brought within my notice was that of an old woman who 

 kept fowls, one of whom had been in the habit of nesting 

 in an old stump of a tree, into which the old woman had 

 to insert her arm whenever she went to take the eggs. 

 On paying one of her daily visits to the nest, in with 

 drawing her arm she not only felt but saw that, as she 

 supposed, she had very slightly scratched her arm against 

 some point of the jagged wood. The wound was scarcely 

 perceptible, and she took no further notice of it till she 

 found herself in pain, and that the skin was inflamed ; 

 and then she applied some common remedy, but not the 

 one that snake poison would have required, and the 

 old woman died. 



