140 



If taken out directly insensibility is complete, the anaesthesia 

 will remain for an hour or more, and then pass away with- 

 out injury to the snake ; but this temporary anaesthesia 

 should, of course, be avoided. Another convenient way of 

 killing a snake without injury is by blowing into its mouth 

 a drop or two of the oil from a dirty tobacco pipe, or 

 administering a few drops of strong decoction of tobacco. 

 But the systematic collector will find that carbolic acid affords 

 the readiest mode of killing specimens for the museum. The 

 liquid should be passed down the throat of the snake by 

 means of a glass pipette about nine inches long. Twenty 

 drops thus administered will destroy a large cobra in a couple 

 of minutes. The snake is put to no apparent pain ; it soon 

 shivers, becomes insensible and dies with paralytic symp- 

 toms. 



When you have your dead specimen before you, you can 

 take down its description, diagnose it, draw or paint its 

 portrait (a plan strongly recommended to officers who are 

 disinclined to trail large bottles of specimens about the 

 country) or even photograph it ; but photography is not, I 

 find, a very successful delineator of snakes, and it does not 

 give the slightest clue to the pattern of their coloration. The 

 only snakes which can be photographed successfully are 

 those with lustreless scales, such .as the HydrophidcB, some 

 Homalopsidce, and the Viperi/na. 



Either the whole snake, or merely its skin, may be pre- 

 served ; of stuffing I do not speak ; perhaps, on their arrival 

 in England some cunning taxidermist may be able to make 

 something better than a hideous sausage of your snake 

 skins,* but that is beyond the limits of my subject. 



Snakes may be preserved entire by substituting glycerine 

 mixed with carbolic acid for the natural fluids of the body. 



* Some sad examples of taxidermy applied to snake-skins may be 

 seen in the Madras Museum. 



