66 BRITISIL SERPENTS. 
secretion for the longest period. ‘That is to say, it is 
a matter of “dose”; for a gland which has been 
storing up secreted poison, say, for a month, will con- 
tain more poison than one which has discharged its 
contents the day before, and consequently will have a 
more deadly effect on the person bitten. This is 
doubtless a sound argument so far. But Dr Guyon 
goes on to conclude that the greatest accumulation of 
poison takes place during the period of libernation, 
“because the animal is in a state of torpor, and does 
not take any food during that season.”! Now I con- 
fess that this seems to me a very different thine. I 
quite aeree that the bite of an adder which has not 
used its fangs for some time will be more dangerous 
than that from one which has emptied its poison-gland 
of its virulent contents just previously. But I find 
it hard to believe that the greatest accumulation of 
venom takes place during the period of hibernation. 
Consider for a moment the physiological condition of 
the reptile. The activity of all the functions is re- 
duced to a minimum. The heart just beats feebly 
occasionally, respiration is almost suspended, the 
secretion of the digestive fluids ceases absolutely, and all 
chemical change in the body is as nearly non-existent 
as is compatible with the maintenance of life at all. 
The secretion of poison in the poison-eland is precisely 
the same kind of process as the secretion of the bile 
in the liver—ce., it is the production of a powertul 
1M. C. Cooke, Our Reptiles and Batrachians, p. 69. 
