VENOMOUS SXAKES 311 



(ordant sound witli the harmonies of this sylvan world. For 

 ill the hollows of the tangled roots and in the dense underwood 

 of the forest a brood of noxious reptiles loves to conceal itself, 

 .111(1 who knows whether a snake, armed with poisonous fangs, 

 may not dart forth from the rustling foliage. 



Gradually, however, these reflections wear away, and time 

 and experience convince one that the snakes in the tropical 

 woods are hardly more to be feared than in the forests 

 of Germany or France, where also the viper will sometimes 

 inflict a deadly wound. These reptiles are, indeed, far from 

 being of so frequent occurrence as is generally believed ; and 

 on meeting with a snake, there is every probability of its 

 belonging to the liarmless species, which show themselves much 

 more frequently by day, and are by far more numerous. Even 

 in India and Ceylon, where serpents are said to abound, they 

 make their appearance so cautiously that the surprise of long 

 residents is invariably expressed at the rarity with which they 

 are to be seen. Dr. Russell, who particularly studied the 

 serpents of India, found that, out of forty-three species which 

 he himself examined, not more than seven were found to possess 

 poisonous fangs ; and Davy, whose attention was carefully directed 

 to the snakes of Ceylon, came to the conclusion that but four 

 out of the twenty species he could collect, were venomous, and 

 that, of these, only two were capable of inflicting a wound likely 

 to be fatal to man. 



Sir E. Tennent, who frequently performed journeys of two to 

 five hundred miles through the jungle without seeing a single 

 snake, never heard, during his long residence in Ceylon, of the 

 death of a European which was caused by the bite of one of 

 these reptiles; and in almost every instance accidents to the 

 natives happened at night, when the animal, having been sur- 

 prised or trodden on, had inflicted the wound in self-defence. 

 Thus, to avoid danger, the Singhalese, when obliged to leave their 

 houses in the dark, carry a stick with a loose ring, the noise of 

 which, as they strike it on the ground, is sufiBcient to warn the 

 snakes to leave their path. 

 fe During his five years' travels through the whole breadth of 

 tropical America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, M. de Cas- 

 telnau, although ever on the search, collected no more than 

 ninety-one serpents, of which only twenty-one were poisonous ; 



