142 BRITISH SERPENTS. 
this country, and rather difficult to be attained: Two 
or three ounces of the powder of dried adders and 
two ounces of adder’s oil, mixed in a pint of canary, 
and repeated several times. As soon as the malignity 
and venom are destroyed, treat the sores as wounds or 
ulcers.” 
Which Myr Osbaldistone considered the most expen- 
sive, and the harder to get,—the adder’s oil, or the 
pint of canary,—is not stated. Perhaps the latter was 
dear, the former not easily to be had. In another 
part of this interesting old book he writes :— 
“Snakes and Adders.—To drive them from the 
garden, plant wormwood in various parts of it, and 
they will not come near it. Or smoke the place with 
hartshorn, or hly roots burnt in a fire-pan, and they 
will fly from the place. Or old shoes burut, or other 
stinking stuff, will drive them away; or ash - tree 
boughs, while green leaves are on them, laid about 
your ground will have the same effect. Or, take a 
handful of onions and ten river crabfish, beat them 
well together, and lay it in the place where they come, 
and you may kill many of them together.” 
Of these remedies, it can quite be believed that the 
burning of old shoes would be very effective in driving 
away the most intrusive adder; but, unfortunately, no 
respectable person would care to be in that spot either 
as long as the fumes were at all potent, and when that 
effect had worn off the adders might return too. 
