194 



THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



it has a tail curved over its back like a pariah dog ; but the 

 fact that it can by a single flick of that tail put you to the 

 necessity of howling for the next twenty-four hours. Thus 

 the scorpion by its tail, the snake by its fangs, and the 

 centipede by its jaws, are linked together into one family 

 to which, in accordance with scientific usage, I have ven- 

 tured to give a name. 



For the sake of brevity and simplicity I would call them 

 Hypodermatikosyringophoroi. 



These are the Ghazis on our borders, that come among us 

 unnoticed to stab and murder, and India is generally un- 

 derstood to be infested with them to an extent that renders 

 life precarious. In deference to this general understanding 

 our paternal Government has been moved at times to sanc- 

 tion the expenditure of vast sums of public money, in 

 efforts to compass their extermination. Out of a lakh of 

 rupees or so paid away annually in rewards for the slaugh- 

 ter of wild beasts, a large portion is always devoted to this 

 chimera of extirpating venomous serpents. The deaths 

 from snake-bite, or supposed snake-bite, in a year through- 

 out India, average less than one in ten thousand of the 

 population ; so, if the reward system leads to the destruc- 

 tion of one deadly snake out of eighteen thousand in the 



