74 OUE EEPTILES. 



the root, putting it into as hot water as I could bear. He 

 also made me drink a quantity of ammonia and water, and 

 then go to bed. The finger was very painful, and bled 

 for a long time, and I was very feverish. The next day I 

 got up, but was very weak, and there was a green mark all 

 up from my finger, which was very large, to my left side, and 

 all up my arm. The mark as far as the side was in a 

 narrow line, but at the side it was in a large blotch. My 

 finger was poulticed, and I had a cushion, dipped in water in 

 which broken poppy-heads had been boiled, placed between 

 my arm and side. The arm was much swelled, and I soon 

 went to bed again. The next day I got up again, and from 

 thence began rapidly to get well, and in a week had my arm 

 out of a sling and my finger almost well. I was perfectly 

 well by the day fortnight on which the bite occurred. These 

 facts are, I need hardly say, perfectly true, and the more 

 remarkable because olive oil was not used at all.* 



The Viper is ovo-viviparous, that is, the young 

 escape from the egg just before, or at the time 

 of parturition, the membrane being very thin 

 and easily ruptured. From ten to twenty young 

 are produced at a birth, and these are as vigor- 

 ous and pugnacious as their parents immediately 

 on their entrance into the world. Before the 

 event takes place which ushers so many little 

 reptiles into society, the parent female, then in a 

 more sluggish and inactive condition than at 

 other times, may often be observed lying in the 

 full blaze of sunshine, to acquire from that source 



* Science Gossip, vol. i. p. 160. 



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