168 Note on the Map of Mountains. 
7. Curious fact respecting Animal Poison.* 
It seems highly probable, that an infuriated serpent will 
secrete the poisonous fiuid much more promptly than when 
ina placid state. And it is no doubt equally true, that 
many animals, which under ordinary circumstances are per- 
fectly innoxious, become armed with a salivous poison 
when infuriated: a truly inexplicable phenomenon. Man 
himself becomes somewhat poisonous when highly excited 
by anger. Dr. 5S. Brown informed me that he has had 
patients under his care, who had béen bitten in personal 
combats, and whose wounds exhibited every symptom of 
poison, pertinaciously resisting the ordinary modes of cure ; 
but in these cases, the deleterious fluid is the saliva, (but it 
has been supposed that fragments of the tartar from the 
teeth remaining in the wound, were the cause of the appar- 
ent poison,) whereas in the serpent, as is well known, it is 
a peculiar secretion deposited in its proper recipient cavity. 
8. Map shewing the relative height of the principal Moun- 
tains on the Globe. 
( 
Mr. Sitniman—Sir, 
I was sometime since very much gratified at seeing pro- 
posals of Mr. Timothy Swan, of Boston, for publishing by 
subscription, a Mapt shewing the relative heights of all the 
principal mountains in the world. Having lately been in 
Boston, I called on Mr. S. and subscribed my name. The 
plate I was pleased to find nearly finished. As the work 
may not be known to many of your readers, allow me to 
call their attention to it. ‘The engraving is beautiful as a 
picture, but to the mineralogist, and indeed to every inquir- 
ing mind, is exceedingly valuable, as it presents at one view 
ihe aspect and comparative heights of all the most cele- 
brated mountains, the limits of perpetual snow, of vegeta- 
tion, &c. The additions to the American edition are very 
numerous, comprising all our most elevated summits.— 
* This fragment should have been inserted in Mr. Say'’s memeir on her- 
petology, but was accidentally omitted. 
+ The Map is about eighteen inches square. 
