14 Through the BraziHan Wilderness 



These include one very formidable venomous snake, the 

 Indian hamadryad, or giant cobra, and several non- 

 poisonous snakes. In Africa I killed a small cobra which 

 contained w^ithin it a snake but a few inches shorter than 

 itself; but, as far as I could find out, snakes were not 

 the habitual diet of the African cobras. 



The poisonous snakes use their venom to kill their 

 victims, and also to kill any possible foe which they 

 think menaces them. Some of them are good-tempered, 

 and only fight if injured or seriously alarmed. Others 

 are excessively irritable, and on rare occasions will even 

 attack of their own accord when entirely unprovoked 

 and unthreatened. 



On reaching Sao Paulo on our southward journey 

 from Rio to Montevideo, we drove out to the "Institute 

 Serumtherapico," designed for the study of the effects 

 of the venom of poisonous Brazilian snakes. Its direc- 

 tor is Doctor Vital Brazil, who has performed a most 

 extraordinary work and whose experiments and inves- 

 tigations are not only of the utmost value to Brazil but 

 will ultimately be recognized as of the utmost value for 

 humanity at large. I know of no institution of similar 

 kind anywhere. It has a fine modern building, with all 

 the best appliances, in which experiments are carried on 

 with all kinds of serpents, living and dead, with the ob- 

 ject of discovering all the properties of their several 

 kinds of venom, and of developing various anti-venom 

 serums which nullify the effects of the different venoms. 

 Every effort is made to teach the people at large by 

 practical demonstration in the open field the lessons thus 

 learned in the laboratory. One notable result has been 



