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NATURE 



\Feb. 28, 1878 



other appliances may yet enable us to prevent death 

 altogether, is a question which can only be determined 

 by a continuance of those experiments which led to the 

 use of artificial respiration alone. But however valuable 

 such a method as this may occasionally be in saving the 

 lives of English officers, government officials, or persons 

 living within reach of skilled assistance, and who might 

 otherwise be doomed to certain death from the bite of a 

 cobra, it is obvious that it is too complicated to be of 

 much service to the numerous natives who are bitten in 

 localities where no other assistance can be had than that 

 of their comrades, equally ignorant with themselves. If 

 any great diminution is to be effected in the frightful 

 mortality annually resulting from the bites of venomous 

 snakes in India, the remedies must either be so simple 

 and easy of application that they can be used by the 

 most ignorant, or the snakes must be destroyed. The 

 best instructions yet given for the treatment of persons 

 bitten by poisonous snakes are contained in Sir Joseph 

 Fayrer's magnificent work on " The Thanatophidia of 

 India." He recommends that a tight ligature be applied 

 to the limb above the bite, that the bitten part be 

 cut out as quickly as possible, and that the wound 

 thus left be cauterised with a hot coal or hot iron, or 

 touched with nitric or carbolic acid, while brandy or 

 ammonia should be administered internally. Even this 

 treatment, simple though it be, requires knowledge, as 

 well as instruments and skill, which the majority of 

 the natives do not possess. Sir Joseph Fayrer therefore 

 recommends that in every police station and public 

 place plain directions should be printed and hung up, 

 and that at all such places a supply of whipcord, a 

 small knife, a cautery iron, and a bottle of carbolic or 

 nitric acid should be kept, as well as a supply of liquor 

 ammonia for internal administration. But, as Sir Joseph 

 Fayrer says, although comparatively little is to be ex- 

 pected even from this rational mode of treatment, much 

 may be anticipated from prevention, and it is to be 

 effected by making known the nature and appearance of 

 the venomous as distinct from the innocent snakes, and 

 by offering rewards (to be judiciously distributed) for the 

 destruction of the former. The differences between many 

 of the non- venomous and the venomous snakes are not 

 known to the natives, and it is important that a know- 

 ledge of such distinctions should be widely disseminated, 

 not only that the venomous ones may be more easily 

 recognised, and thus avoided or destroyed, but in order 

 to prevent death or serious illness from sheer fright, which 

 may frequently result from the bite of a non-venomous 

 species. For this purpose it would be well if the pictures 

 of the chief venomous snakes contained in Sir Joseph 

 Fayrer's work, or cheaper but accurate lithographic copies 

 of them, were displayed in every police station and pubUc 

 place throughout India. Rewards should be paid for 

 the destruction of venomous snakes only, and if these 

 pictures were exhibited in the way suggested there would 

 be little or no excuse for any mistake, either on the part 

 of the natives who killed the snakes, or the officers whose 

 duty it would be to pay the reward. As to the amount of 

 reward, and its mode of distribution, there should, he 

 suggests, be a department, or branch of a departmentj 

 with a responsible chief and subordinate agents, for whom 

 certain rules should be laid down, to be observed steadily 



and without hindrance throughout the country, leaving 

 much, as to detail, to the discretion of local authorities. 

 If the destruction of venomous snakes and wild animals 

 in India were intrusted to an officer such as controls 

 the Thuggie and Dacoitee department, he considers that 

 the result would in a few years be as good in the case of 

 noxious animals as it has been in that of noxious men. 

 Thugs and Dacoits. 



THE BEETLES OF ST. HELENA 



Coleoptera Sanctce-Helence. By T. Vernon Wollaston, 

 M.A., F.L.S. 8vo, pp. i.-xxv., 1-256, coloured plate. 

 (London : Van Voorst, 1877.) 

 '~pHIS, the last of its lamented author's valuable de- 

 -L scriptive works on the geographical distribution of 

 beetles (in personally collecting the material for which, it 

 is to be feared that his physical exertions during a weak 

 state of health induced the attack that ended recently in 

 his death), must have been the most satisfactory to him, 

 on account of the complete isolation of its subject, and 

 his discovery of its most striking endemic fauna. The 

 investigation of the Coleoptera of the Madeiras, Salvages, 

 Canaries, and Cape-de-Verdes, with which his name will 

 always be associated, had already resulted in a firm 

 opinion that their peculiar beetle-types could not be 

 satisfactorily referred to any geographical area nov/ exist- 

 ing, but rather to some submerged Atlantic region, of 

 which these groups are the modern representatives ; and 

 the results of his exhaustive work at St. Helena cannot 

 have failed to materially strengthen this idea. Curiously 

 enough, also, the most dominant type in this island is 

 one to which Wollaston was always specially devoted, viz., 

 the Cossonidce, a little known family of weevils, whereof the 

 inordinately numerous species here found, consisting of 

 variations of some half-dozen forms occasionally deve- 

 loped to so marvellous an extent as to be almost ludicrous, 

 amply justified his expression {m liti.) that he had 

 "tumbled on his legs in this little oceanic preserve of 

 the southern Atlantic." 



To any one interested in the faunse of islands, no better 

 conditions could be afforded than those found in St. 

 Helena. Its vast distance from the nearest continents 

 (nearly 1,200 miles from Africa, and 1,800 from South 

 America) and, indeed, from the nearest island (Ascension, 

 700 miles), added to its complete severance by a fathom- 

 less depth at a mile and a half from its present coast-line, 

 are premises of themselves suggesting the probability of 

 abnormal resident forms ; and the peculiar and very 

 dense original vegetation of ebony, redwood, boxwood, 

 Psiadia, asters, gumwood, cabbage-palms, tree-ferns, 

 &c., would reasonably be expected to foster a deve- 

 lopment of special wood-feeding types, to the partia 

 or entire exclusion of other groups. This development, 

 anticipated by Wollaston from the eccentric species 

 received in former years, is wonderfully illustrated by 

 an analysis of the present work. In it, 203 species are 

 recorded, and may probably be taken as very nearly ex- 

 hausting the fauna, since the author captured, mounted^ 

 and examined (with a delicacy, precision, and care 

 peculiar to himself) no less than 10,000 specimens. Of the 

 difficulty attending the collection of such a mass in six 

 months, the author affords an indication by his remark 



