14G 



was in camp for cliolera. All the information I can elicit is 

 that the patient reported himself at 10 p. m., an hour after 

 the occurrence, and when the usual symptoms were rapidly- 

 advancing, and died at 11 p. M. The blood on examination 

 was found to be dark and fluid ; the wound was under 

 the right nipple ; and the snake was reputed to have been 

 a cobra." — Annual Report of the 104^/j Regiment for 1862.* 



Daboia elegoms. Bites from tMs snake often occur in 

 Burma where it is rather common ; I am informed that in 

 the Tharawadi district the Burmans when working in the 

 rice fields, wear stout boots in order to avoid unpleasant 

 eonsequences should they accidentally tread on one. It is a 

 sluggish snake, not easily provoked to bite. A case of death 

 from its bite occurred while I was in Burma in the person 

 of a strong gunner of the battery stationed at Thyetmyo. 

 The account which I received of the accident states that 

 " Soon after day break as he was entering the fowl-house,f 

 which is in close proximity to the barracks, he observed a 

 dark thick-set snake of about two and a half feet in lencrth 

 [afterwards identified as a dah<yia\ and that he took up a 

 piece of bamboo and began teasing it, whereupon the reptile 

 turned and bit him on the finger. The snake held on for a 



* TMs case was the only one of the three Bengal deaths from 

 snake-bite amongst white troops during the period 1861-72 which I 

 was able to obtain. 1 succeeded in obtaining it through the kind 

 assistance of Surgeon-Major Gibbon, officiating Secretary to the 

 Inspector General B. M. S,, Madras. The case is recorded in the 

 A. M. D. Bluebook for 1862 but with the remark •' no particulars are 

 given." The two other cases are not mentioned in the Bluebook for 

 the year. The only other case in India during the same period is 

 the Thyetmyo ease recorded above. 



t Eggs are so dear in Burma that many soldiers keep fowls to 

 supply themselves and the officers with new laid eggs. The fowl-house 

 is a small hut made of planks put roughly together, and a good deal 

 ^f rank vegetation usually springs up round it. 



