PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE WEST INDIES. 197 



bringing the business end, neck and all, a few feet nearer; the head 

 " points," like a leveled rifle, then darts forward with electric swift- 

 ness, guided by an unerring instinct for the selection of the least- 

 protected parts of the body. 



And the vindictive brute is ready to repeat its bite. For a 

 moment it rears back, trembling with excitement, and, if felled by 

 a blow of its victim's stick, will snap away savagely at stumps and 

 stones, or even, like a wounded panther, at its own body. 



A very curious adaptation of means to ends in the modification of 

 the virus is its swiftly fatal effect on birds. A stricken child, though 

 half crazed with fear, may run a distance of three miles before paral- 

 ysis begins to impede its motions; a squirrel will escape to its nest 

 in the top of the tree, only to come forth again and topple down 



BUTTERFLY FISH. 



in its delirium; but a bird drops as if he had swallowed a dose of 

 prussic acid. Serpent virus is specifically a bird poison; in other 

 words, it acts instantaneously in cases where a few moments' delay 

 would defeat the purpose of the snap bite. Wounded rodents will 

 not run very far and can be relied upon to come out of their holes; 

 but a bitten bird, unless promptly paralyzed, would fly out of sight 

 and drop in distant thickets, beyond the ken of its destroyer. And of 

 all bird-killing reptiles the fer-de-lance is the most destructive. The 

 Spaniards have varied its bill of fare by importing the wherewithal 

 of an occasional rabbit stew, but during the preceding ages it had to 

 subsist on poultry, like a popular circuit preacher the hutia rat 

 having developed a talent for avoiding its haunts. 



The alleged horror naturalis of serpents is perhaps not more 

 deep-rooted than the aversion to cats ; at all events, the West Indians 

 have overcome it sufficiently to prefer rat-killing snakes to tabbies. 



