REPTILES, SNAKES AND AMPHIBIANS EATEN AS FOOD. 241 



Portuguese only use the rich fat it contains. The 

 natives of South America eat almost all snakes, and 

 the far West has taught many a fastidious palate from 

 over the sea to relish, with the Ked Indian, the fatal 

 rattlesnake." 



Kaempfer tell us that snakes are eaten in Japan, and 

 Anderson states that the Battus of Sumali, in Airica, eat 

 snakes and alligators. 



The flesh and skin of several serpents is employed in 

 China as medicine, care being taken to cut oflF the head 

 and tail, where it is supposed their poison accumulates. 



A kind of adder, 8 or 10 feet long, is eaten by the 

 people, although it is believed to be rather poisonous. 



A species of serpent from one to three feet long is 

 caught, and after being gutted and washed is shaped into 

 a circle with bamboo pins and dried on a slow ^fire. It 

 is made into medicine. 



The San Francisco Bulletin remarks : — " The ingredients 

 of a witch's cauldron, as described by the poet, could not 

 have been more repulsively disgusting than are the 

 articles and compounds shipped to the Chinese physi- 

 cians of this city from their native country and used as 

 medicines here. There seems to be just at the present 

 time an extra demand for a venomous serpent closely 

 resembling the rattlesnake, of which hundreds are 

 received constantly. A Custom House official brought 

 a specimen of these cheerful looking creatures to this 

 office yesterday — a coiled snake of about four feet long, 

 fanged, and with hideous head scales like a crest. How 

 these animals are taken by patients of Chinese doctors 

 is not known. One would be a fair dose if disguised in 

 a coating of sugar. They are to be taken in sections 

 three times a day, as they are desiccated, or they may be 

 boiled down or pulverised, and taken in powders or 

 rolled into pills." 



Among the Amphibians we have Frogs, the Salamander, 

 and Axolotl utilised. Frogs are eaten in many countries, 

 not only in France and the United States, but also in 

 South America, China, and the Indian Archipelago. The 



