26 Scientific Society of San Antonio. 



driven hastily and quite- a distance to seek shelter in his farm 

 house. That they are highly poisonous is attested by a 

 friend of mine, who, some time ago, told me he had lost a 

 valuable bull which was bitten by a moccasin whilst the animal 

 was drinking water from a water pool in his pasture. A sad 

 case of death from a moccasin bite was that of a young man 

 a few years ago who was bitten in the hand and between the 

 fingers while bathing in the San Antonio river. He was 

 brought quite a distance in a semi-collapsed condition, and la- 

 boring under profound venom intoxication, to the City Hos- 

 pital, where Dr. Clavin and myself treated him. The fingers 

 and hand up to the shoulder joint were fearfully swollen, and 

 gangrenous sloughing with exposure of the tendons and bone 

 set in rapidly before he expired. 



In Louisiana and other Southern States the moccasin is said 

 to be the terror of the negroes about the rice plantations, be- 

 ing more dreaded than the rattlesnake, which strikes only when 

 irritated. This snake's, as well as the rattlesnake's life, is very 

 tenacious. Even when severed from its neck, the head 

 retains its vitality for a long time. For instance, the head 

 of the moccasin seen in our photo reproduction lived over an 

 hour after having been severed from its body, and shortly be- 

 fore I prepared the photo, several yellowish and albuminous 

 venom drops were ejected from both poison fangs. The 

 snake's head, of course, was made harmless before the photo 

 was taken. As to the vitality and viciousness of the rattlesnake, 

 a case was related to me personally by a highly respected gentle- 

 man from Medina some years ago. A farmer of Medina, some 

 twenty-five miles west of San Antonio, in plowing his field, 

 came across a rattlesnake, and the plow happened to sever the 

 snake in two parts. The farmer believing the snake to be dead, 

 went on plowing, and, in turning back from the opposite end to 

 the place where the plow had run over the rattler, he noticed 

 something like a stick in his way among some weeds, and, in 

 the act of picking it up he unfortunately seized the neck part 

 of the snake. With a sudden strike the rattler plunged its fangs 

 into the farmer's hand, and in less than five hours the man 

 was dead. 



The peculiar anatomical, especially muscular, ligamentous and 

 osseous arrangement of the serpent's mouth and throat part, 



