SNAKE-POISON AND ITS ACTION. 39 



If we turn from Australian to Indian snakes, the 

 peculiar tendency of the poison to concentrate its 

 action on special nerve-centres becomes still more 

 marked. The predilection of the cobra poison for the 

 respiratory centre has already been dwelt on. More 

 remarkable and strange is the action of the Indian 

 viper-poison on the minute ganglia in the vaso-motor 

 nerve ends, which control the capillary circulation, and 

 by their paralysis bring about extensive hsemorrhage 

 through diapedesis. 



It is quite impossible for us with our present 

 scanty knowledge to account for these peculiarities and 

 irregularities in the action of a poison, which we know 

 now to accomplish its destruction of animal life by one 

 uniform design and principle of action. That the 

 protean forms under which the poison-symptoms 

 present themselves are one and all the result of reduc- 

 tion and suspension of motor nerve currents may now 

 be accepted as a well proven and fully established 

 scientific fact. But why the effects of one and the 

 same cause are so varying in their appearance, why the 

 poison of different varieties of snakes, and even that of 

 the same variety under different circumstances, make 

 such a capricious selection among the various motor 

 nerve-centres we can not explain and probably never 

 will. Chemical analysis of the dead poison, no matter 

 how minutely and elaborately it may be effected, will 

 probably never throw much light on the " why " of 

 this strange puzzle, for the subtle phenomena of life 

 are apt to elude the grasp of the analyst. We have to 



