DR. TH. NEUMANN. 105 



A snake will turn and strike from any posture, but 

 the coil is the attitude always assumed when possible. 

 The coil acts as an anchor and enables the animal to 

 shake its fangs free from the wound. A snake can 

 rarely strike beyond half its length. There may be 

 cases when it throws its whole body forward or actually 

 jumps at the victim, but this does not happen very often. 

 The nervous mechanism, which controls the act of 

 striking, seems to be in the spinal cord, for if we cut oflf 

 a snake's head and then pinch its tail, the stump of the 

 neck returns and with some accuracy hits the hand of 

 the experimenter, if he has the nerve to hold on. 



The poison gland is probably a modification of a saliva 

 gland. It secretes a comparatively small quantity of 

 fluid, a rattlesnake six feet in length surely not more 

 than five or six drops, but a small fraction of such a 

 drop is sufficient to create fatal changes in the blood of 

 any big mammal or bird. If the snake has not bitten for 

 a long time the gland is brimful of it, and the poison 

 itself seems then to be more effective, but the regener- 

 ation of the lost secretion occurs very rapidly, and 

 also the recently produced liquid is very quick in its 

 action. 



The snake poison may be compared to saliva, or rather 

 it is a kind of saliva, which has by degrees assumed its 

 dangerous qualities. Not all poisonous snakes inflict 

 death by means of their bites ; there are species whose 

 bites, though disagreeable and painful, do not do more 

 harm than the sting of a scorpion or a big wasp, and 

 there is some probability that the liquid in all cases is 

 nearly the same, only different in the degree of its 

 effectiveness. The poison of snakes is nearly always 

 very innocent looking ; it appears in most cases as a 

 clear, thin, light yellow or greenish liquid, without 

 smell or taste; it sinks in water, dissolves in it with very 

 light clouding, reddens litmus paper and thus betrays 



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