518 JOURNAL, BOMB A Y NA TURAL HISTOR Y SOCIETY, Vol. XL 



" We doubt whether the cobra still has its fangs and whether the 

 Hindu runs any real danger in approaching it. We promise our 

 man a Spanish dollar if he will make the snake bite two fowls. A 

 black hen is brought straggling very vigorously and is presented to 

 the cobra. The latter sits up partially, looks at the fowl, bites it and 

 lets go. The fowl is set free, it runs off in fright. Six minutes after- 

 wards, watch in hand, it vomits, stiffens its claws and dies. A second 

 hen is placed in front of the snake; it bites her twice: she dies in 

 eight minutes."* 



Some jugglers exhibit snakes from which they have taken care to 

 extract the fangs or to extirpate the glands-, but it is incontestable 

 that many of them-— for I have satisfied myself on this point— per- 

 form their tricks with cobras in whom the venomous apparatus is 

 absolute! v intact. It is due to their perfect acquaintance with the 

 habits and movements of the reptile that they almost always avoid 

 being bitten. Nevertheless accidents sometimes happen to them and 

 every year some fall victims in the course of their jugglery. Ifc 

 appears therefore that they do not know how to render themselves 

 immune to the venom by any method. 



However, in a paper published in 1895 {British Medical Journal^ 

 17th August), Professor Fraser of Edinburgh cites a certain number 

 of experiments performed in his laboratory upon white rats and kittens, 

 from which it would appear that the prolonged injection of the venom 

 in the end renders these animals absolutely refractory to the subcuta-* 

 neous inoculation of doses many times fatal of the same venom. He 

 concludes from this that probably this method of vaccination must be 

 in use amongst snake charmers. 



I must say that, on repeated occasions, I have attempted without 

 success to demonstrate these facts recorded by Professor Fraser. I 

 have succeeded in making rabbits, guinea-pigs and pigeons absorb 

 enormous doses of cobra poison by the stomach. 



I have administered thus up to a thousand times the fatnl dose, and 

 never have I been able to ascertain, contrary to what one finds in the 

 case of abrine and ricine (Ehrlich), that the serum of these animals 

 became antitoxic, even in a feeble degree. It appears to me certain 

 that the venom is neither destroyed nor absorbed in the digestive tube, 

 Note.— A. E. Brehm:— "Les reptiles," p. 43G. 



