48 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



notice has recovered. The remedies used were eau de lucezxid 

 spirits (brandy, hollands, or rum). The eau de luce we certainly 

 looked upon, if promptly administered and continued during 

 the crisis, as a specific. I have never myself seen a white 

 man under the influence of snake poison ; I was, however, 

 acquainted with men who had been bitten by venomous snakes 

 and recovered under the treatment indicated. A personal 

 friend in South Africa once told me that he had seen black 

 snakes fighting- (he spoke of the kind known by the native name 

 Imamha Mnyajiia, and which is, I believe, almost identical with 

 the Cobra Naje of India), but he was unable to say what was the 

 result of the combat, he being on horseback at the time and 

 anxious, I take it, to get a valuable animal out of the way of, 

 probably, the most dangerous and aggressive of the ophidian 

 race. The question as to the effect produced by the bite of a 

 poisonous snake upon one of the same species, or even of the- 

 same genus, is of the greatest interest to all practical naturalists,, 

 and items of evidence are as rare as they are valuable. — I am,, 

 sir, yours obediently, W. H. TORRIANO. 



142 Cecil-street, South Melbourne, i6th June, 1888. 



FOOD OF PLANARIANS. 



To the Editor of the Victorian Naturalist. 



Dear Sir, — During one of my night rambles I found one of 

 those banded, leech-like worms. I think they are called 

 Planarian worms, or terrestrial Planarise. In Darwin's. 

 " Voyage of a Naturalist," page 27, he mentions keeping some 

 of these worms and feeding them on rotten wood. If these 

 terrestrial Planariae are the striped leech-like worms we find 

 here, I think they feed on animal food as well as vegetable. 

 The worm I found had captured one of those insects known as 

 wood-lice or slaters. It caught this insect by means of the 

 mucous coating with which these worms are covered, and, after 

 crawling over it a short time, it protruded an organ from the 

 under side of the body, and, after some time, inserted it between 

 the segments on the under side of the slater. In a short time I 

 noticed the worm had increased in size ; also that it had 

 become a much darker colour, from the contents of the slater 

 flowing into its body, and it was not long before the empty shell 

 was all that remained of what had once been a slater or wood- 

 louse. I found one of these worms devouring the larva of a 

 ground beetle, but, as I did not see the worm kill the larva, I 

 took no further notice, although the worm had the same organ 

 buried in the larva. I mention this, as Darwin speaks of rotten 

 wood as the food on which he fed those kept bv him. — I am, 

 yours truly, CHARLES C. BRITTLEBANK. 



Leylands, Spring Vale, 26th May, 1888. 



