LONDON AND SUBURBS. 39 



at them, da en kapp sattes at dem, or when some 

 one poked their heads with the end of his stick they 

 never bit at the stick. Some of the more forward of the 

 small crowd, sometimes dared to take hold of them 

 without the snakes attempting to bite them : whence 

 there seemed to be reason to believe that this man had 

 clipped off the teeth with which they [T. I. p. 405.] 

 bite. Such were our opinions about this, to-day. The 

 following day Dr. Mitchel paid him highly, when he made 

 known to Dr. Mitchel in what his art consisted, that he 

 could so carelessly handle the vipers ; viz.: in this, that 

 when he had caught one of them fast, he had cut off the 

 • two large teeth, which they, as a cat with its claws, can 

 shoot out and bite with, or draw back. After they have 

 lost them, they can do no further harm. He related that 

 sometimes when he had caught them, he had been bitten 

 by them, but that his antidote for that had been Snake- 

 Oil, Orm-olja, which he had made in this way, that he 

 had boiled the snake-fat, Orm-ister, to oil, which oil he 

 constantly carried with him in a glass bottle, and when 

 he was bitten, he smeared himself with this oil over the 

 place where he had been bitten, when he had no further 

 harm from it, after he had merely rubbed in the oil.* 



* In M. Worm's Reptiles et Poissons, 144 pp., Paris, 8vo., is pp. 62-3 an 

 " Addition a 1'article de la Vipere Commune" consisting of two extracts from 

 Valmont de Bomare, a contemporary of Kalm, of which the second is 

 "Remedes contre la morsure de la Vipere. Les remedes vulgaires 

 '■ contre la morsure de la vipere (p. 63) sont exterieures et interieures. Les 

 " exterieures sont de Her promptement, si l'on peut, la partie au-dessus de la 

 ' ' morsure, to tie up if possible the part above the bite ; d'approcher le plus pres 

 " de cette morsure un morceau de fer rougi au feu, to hold a piece of red hot 

 ' ' iron close to the bite, ou de bruler sur la plaie un peu de poudre a canon, or 

 '■ to burn a little gunpowder on the wound, ou bien enfin de scarifier la plaie et 

 " d'appliquer dessus de l'ail, du sel ammoniac piles ensembles, to scarify the 

 " wound and apply to it a mixture of garlic and sal ammoniac pounded together. 

 ' ■ As an internal remedy, on avale l'alcali volatile pris a des doses assez fortes." 

 —(Valmont de Bomare.) [J.L.] 



