ORDER OPHIDIA. 341 



hours, and the third did not feel the effects of the poison 

 until three hours had elapsed. At the end of four days the 

 experiments were recommenced with the same rattle-snake. 

 The first dog died in thirty seconds, and another in four 

 minutes ; three days afterwards, a frog having received the 

 bite, died in two minutes, and a pullet in eight minutes. 

 Some time afterwards, they presented to the same ser- 

 pent a white araphisboena, which died in eight minutes ; and 

 the rattle-snake itself, being bitten in its turn, did not survive 

 more than twelve minutes at the most. 



Kalm assures us that the crotali destroy horses and oxen 

 almost instantaneously, but that dogs resist better. He 

 also adds that men may be cured when a remedy is applied 

 in time ; but that if any one of the larger vessels is opened, 

 death supervenes in two or three minutes. The fangs, says 

 the same traveller, will pierce through leathern boots, and of 

 course through gloves. 



In the Philosophical Transactions for 1810, Sir Everard 

 Home relates an example of the fatal effects of the bite of 

 crotali. Among the symptoms which he enumerates, we 

 find such a weakening of the action of the heart, that the 

 pulse is scarcely to be felt, and so great an irritability of 

 the stomach, that this viscous can retain nothing in its cavity. 

 When the wound has been made in the finger, that part 

 immediately mortifies. When death takes place, we do 

 not find that the absorbent vessels, and the lymphatic 

 ganglia, exhibit the alterations which poisonous substances 

 usually produce in them. The body preserves its general 

 aspect; the parts in the neighbourhood of the bite alone 

 are attacked in an apparent manner. Moreover, the effect 

 of the poison is so immediate, and the irritability of the 

 stomach becomes so great, that remedies in general come too 

 late : very little chance of success remains. 



It is also observed in these unhappy circumstances, that 



