38G Notes on an alleged species of poisonous Lizard, Sfc. 



year 1819, at Dinapore, I had a striking instance brought to 

 my notice of the deadly effect of the bite of what was called 

 a Karrait. About 1 o'clock a. m. I was roused out of bed to 

 go and assist a native woman who had been bitten by a 

 snake. I instantly threw on my dressing gown and went to 

 the door, where I found a woman of about thirty, strong and 

 healthy, though apparently in a fainting state, lying on the 

 charpoy, in which she had been carried by her male rela- 

 tives. One of the men was her husband, who told me that his 

 wife, while asleep by his side, on a mat on the floor, had 

 been bitten by the reptile, which she not knowing what it 

 was, gave a push to with her foot ; when it fixed its fangs on 

 the great toe of one foot, and as there was a light in the hut, 

 he started up, and saw a black looking snake move rapidly 

 towards his brother's bed, on the other side of the hut ; the 

 reptile bit his brother too. He then gave the alarm to his 

 neighbours, and they instantly set out for cantonments. 

 From my inquiries, and the distance of the people's hut 

 from my quarters, I am convinced that barely twenty minutes, 

 or half an hour at furthest, had elapsed from the time the 

 woman was bit to my seeing her. On being bit she felt 

 excruciating pain in the foot, which was speedily followed by 

 overpowering giddiness and sickness. While this conversa- 

 tion was going on I had my finger upon the poor woman's 

 wrist, there was however no pulse, she was quite dead, and 

 the distracted husband could scarcely be made to credit it, 

 entreating that I would do something. To please the poor 

 man, I conveyed eau de luce in a spoon into the woman's 

 mouth, but of course it ran out again, and he at length be- 

 came convinced that all was over. The brother who had 

 been bitten too, recovered, for the simple reason I presume, 

 that the greater part, or nearly the whole of the secreted 

 venom had already been inoculated into the first victim. 

 The marks of the fangs were very distinct, and full of 

 thin blood that oozed out from them. Dr. Breton publish- 



