208 A GREAT ACQUISITION*. 



people walked upon them and crushed them with- 

 out paying any attention to the fact. The business 

 of destroying them was left to the pigs, the cats, 

 and even the fowls. They fell resolutely on the 

 head of the reptile and devoured it, without feeling 

 any evil result." 



At Quihi, a tiger-hunter killed a rattlesnake, 

 which he had mistaken for a dead tree. It mea- 

 sured 17 feet in length, 18 inches in circumference, 

 and was furnished with twenty-five rings or rattles. 

 One day the Abbe's companion went to the barn 

 for some maize and took up a serpent in his hand, 

 mistaking it for a blade of corn ; another day a 

 cobra de capello glided into the school-room, and 

 was on the point of biting one of the children, 

 when it was killed by the priest with a blow of a 

 stick. A horse they possessed was one evening 

 missing, and they set out to search for him. Night 

 was coming on apace, and, after a long hunt, the 

 animal was still non est inventus. " All at once," 

 the Abbe says, " I perceived at my feet, and gliding 

 from under the grass where he had lain concealed, 

 a rattlesnake of about two yards in length. I was 

 about to take to my heels, when I bethought me 

 that this serpent captured alive would be a great 

 acquisition to my collection of reptiles, or, other- 

 wise, his skin would make a grand pair of slippers 

 for my mother. Quick as thought I rushed upon 



