CONCERNING SERPENTS. 



273 



useful as stimulants ; but he found, by experiment, that neither liquor 

 ammoniae nor liquor potassae destroys the poisonous properties of the 

 venom, although mixed directly with it. Suction of the wound is 

 good, but may be dangerous. Immediate cauterization of the wound, 

 or removal of it by the knife, is indispensable. 



It was found, by Dr. Gilman, that healthy, vigorous vegetables 

 perish in a few hours on being inoculated with the venom of the rattle- 

 snake. Others have found the same results, although Dr. Mitchell did 

 not. Dr. Salisbury poisoned eight lilac and other bushes, the leaves 

 of which above — not below — the point of inoculation withered in a 

 few days. Terrible and virulent as this poison is, it undergoes de- 

 composition in a short time, and becomes filled with forms of animal 

 life and covered with fungi. It may, when fresh from the fang, be 

 swallowed by the animal itself, or by man, without injury. Prof. 

 Baird says: "I have myself (rather foolishly, I must confess) swal- 

 lowed nearly the entire contents of one gland of a large rattlesnake ;" 

 but, if the animal be inoculated by its own venom, it speedily dies. 

 Such, however, is not the case with the venom of the cobra, according 

 to experiments made by Dr. Fayrer, who says : " I believe that it is 



Fig. 15. 



Ring or Gbass Snake, common in England. 



capable of absorption, through the mucous and serous membranes with 

 which it is brought into contact. Placed on the corjunctiva of dogs, 

 the symptoms of poisoning were rapidly developed." The same au- 

 thority states that the cobra does not die from its own bite, or that of 

 its kind, but that innocuous serpents are directly killed by it. 



It is a singular fact that the flesh of animals killed by snake-poison 



may be eaten with impunity. The fowls killed by Dr. Fayrer were 



taken and eaten by the sweepers. But the blood of an animal killed 



by snake-venom is itself poisonous, and poisons the animal into which 



vol. iv. — 18 



