106 THE AGRICULTURAL PESTS OF INDIA. 



Hydrophis, Pelamis, and Platurus. The land snakes are 

 greatly the more numerous, but there are not many of them 

 poisonous, genera Bungarus, Callophis, Daboia, Megrer- 

 ophis, Naja, Ophiophagus, and Xenurelaps. In India, in 

 1884-85, 19,629 persons and 1728 cattle died from 

 snake-bites, and Government gave Bs. 28,551 in rewards 

 for killing 380,981 poisonous snakes. These rewards 

 are the only means had recourse to by the British Indian 

 Government to destroy snakes. But the people might be 

 encouraged to keep fowls, and particularly the guinea-fowl, 

 to destroy the eggs and young snakes. Snake-birds and 

 the mongoose are their natural enemies. Earth, the ligature, 

 and the knife are the means always at hand to remedy 

 the bites of venomous snakes. Some of the pythons of 

 India are 16 to 24 feet long. Snakes are said to avoid 

 the fennel plant, Nigella sativa, as well as all places 

 strewed with fennel seed. 



Solpurgidae, a family of the class Arachnoidea. Galeodes 

 araneoides, one of this family, is a great spider of the 

 Central Asia steppes. It moves abroad at night, to seize 

 and eat all weaker creatures, as lizards, bats, and musk 

 rats. Galeodes fatalis has been known to kill a sparrow, 

 and they even eat their own species. Thirty to thirty- 

 five of this genus are known to naturalists. 



Sorghum vulgare, Pers. t is the cholum or juari of India. 

 The most peculiar of the diseases to which it is liable is 

 that which makes the young stalks poisonous to cattle, if 

 eaten by them when semi-parched from want of rain. 

 Of the fact there can be no doubt ; in the scarcity of 

 1877 large numbers of cattle were known to perish from 

 this cause, their bodies becoming inflated after a meal of 

 the young ji.uir plants, and death ensuing shortly after- 

 wards, apparently in severe pain. A good explanation 



