l6 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1665. 



Of the JVay of hilling Rattlc-snahes. By Capt. Silas Taylor. N" 3, p, 43. 



There being not long since occasion given at a meeting of the Royal Society 

 to discourse on rattle- snakes, that worthy and inquisitive gentleman. Captain 

 Silas Taylor, related the manner how they were killed in Virginia, which he 

 afterwards was pleased to give in writing, attested by two credible persons in 

 whose presence it was done; which is as follows: — 



The wild penny-royal* or dittany of Virginia, grows straight up about one 

 foot high, with the leaves like penny-royal, with little blue tufts at the joining 

 of the branches to the plant, the colour of the leaves being a reddish green, 

 but the water distilled, of the colour of brandy, of a fair yellow : the leaves of it 

 bruised are very hot and biting upon the tongue : and of these, so bruised, they 

 took some, and having tied them in the cleft of a long stick, they held them 

 to the nose of the rattle-snake, who by turning and wriggling, laboured as much 

 as she could to avoid it : but she was killed with it in less than half an hour, 

 and, as was supposed, by the scent thereof; which was done in the year 1657, 

 in the month of July, at which season they repute those creatures to be in the 

 greatest vigour for their poison. 



The same gentleman afterwards affirmed, that in those places where the 

 wild penny-royal or dittany grows, no rattle-snakes are observed to come. 



^ Relation of Persons killed by siihterraneoiis Damps.^ By Sir 



Robert Moray. N" S, p. M. 



This relation sets forth that seven or eight men and one woman were instan- 

 taneously suffocated by going into the waste in an old coal-pit full of the damp. 



* The plant here mentioned is, perhaps, some species of tencrium or satureia, or, as some have 

 supposed, of cunila. Many other plants have been extolled for their supposed powers, as antidotes to 

 the poison of the xatde-snake. Tlie most celebrated "is the polygala senega, which, however, is only 

 understood to act as an antidote when taken internally, as well as applied externally. The relation in 

 the present paper certainly borders on tlie marvellous, and has accordingly been fixed upon as a proper 

 subject of ridicule by Sir John Hill in Jiis '' Review of the Roj/al Society.'' 



+ What is called the damp, or choak damp, in tliese and other mines, is fixed air or carbonic acid 

 gas. It is of the same nature witli the deleterious gas of the dogs grotto (grotta de' Cani) near Naples. 

 Being heavier than common air, it occupies the lower part of tliese subterraneous places. If a lighted 

 candle becomes quickly and wholly extinguished, when let down into these excavations, experienced 

 miners will not venture to work in tliem. In the upper parts of coal pits, and other mines, there 

 is often anotlier kind of gas, called the^'/e damp, which is inflammable air, or hydrogen gas j tlie 

 sudden explosioii of which has sometimes destroyed tliose who were employed about these pits, as 

 will be seen by the narratives that will be inserted in the subsequent volumes of tliis Abridge- 

 nuent. 



