1Q8 I'HILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, [anNO 1727. 



The next morning early she was found dead in the garden, and much swoln; 

 so that nobody cared to examine or search where she was bitten. 



About a quarter of an hour after he had bitten the cat, he bit a hen twice; 

 the hen seemed very sick and drooping, and could not, or did not fly up to her 

 usual place of roost among the rest that night ; but the next day she seemed 

 very well, and continued so till evening, when being killed, and her feathers 

 scalded off, there were two punctures in her thigh, and a scratch on her breast 

 over the craw, all which looked livid. 



About a week after, having got a large bull frog, they brought that over him 

 as usual; he bit it with much force, so that he seemed to fasten for a small 

 space. The frog died in about '2 minutes. In less than a quarter of an hour 

 he bit a chicken, which was hatched the February before, that died in 3 

 minutes. 



About the middle of June, Capt. Hall took him out according to custom, 

 and having got a common black snake, not of the viper kind, about 2^ or near 

 3 feet long, in good health, just taken, he put them both together, and irri- 

 tated them both, that they bit each other, and he perceived the black snake had 

 drawn blood of the rattle snake before he took them asunder. In less than 8 

 minutes the black snake was dead, and Capt. Hall could not perceive the rattle 

 snake at all the worse or sick. 



On the last day of June, Capt. H. took the snake out to try whether, if he 

 bit himself, it would not prove mortal to him. Capt. H. hanged him so, that 

 he was not above half his length on the ground; and with two needles at the 

 end of a stick, one to prick, the other to scrach, irritated him so much that he 

 soon bit himself, after having attempted to bite the stick many times. Capt. 

 H. then let him down, and he was quite dead in 8 or JO minutes. 



The snake being cut in 5 pieces, and given to a hog, the head part first, the 

 hog eat up all the snake, and 10 or 12 days afterwards the same hog was alive 

 and in health. And this was no more than Capt. H. had seen before. Indeed 

 he has heard 50 accounts of the same kind, and was told that those hogs which 

 feed in the marshes will run after the common sort of water snakes, which are 

 not poisonous, and will feed on them greedily; and in Maryland in the month 

 of August, he saw a hog eat up the head of a rattle snake just cut off, and 

 while it was gasping very dreadfully; and he was told it was a common thing, 

 and it would do them no harm. 



On the 10th of June 1723, Mr. Thomas Cooper, a physician, sent to inform 

 Capt. Hall, he had got a tine rattle-snake, which had been taken not above 4 

 days, and was about 3^- feet long, and that he designed to try whether he could 

 save some of the dogs after the snake should bite them. He provided a large 



