Zoology.-] NATUEAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. [Reptiles. 



This species was long supposed to be confined to Tasmania, 

 where it is very abundant ; and my first announcement* of its 

 occurrence on the mainland near Melbourne was supposed by sub- 

 sequent writers on the subject in New South Wales and London to 

 be erroneous ; these writers, however, now (without referring to 

 their former criticisms) quote it as an undoubted Victorian species. 

 In point of fact, it is very common about Prahran, Elsternwick, and 

 other south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, but its range seems 

 very restricted, specimens not having yet been recorded from the 

 north or western parts of the colony. The numerous young are 

 brought forth in December and January. 



The blackish examples, especially if the reddish color of the side 

 scales and edges of ventrals is distinct, are frequently mistaken for 

 the Black Snake ; but the scales on the under side of the tail being 

 only in a single row throughout, and there being one instead of two 

 nasal plates, easily distinguish them. 



A large number of the dangerous cases of snake-bites near 

 Melbourne are due to this species, which for its size is extremely 

 venomous. One remarkable case excited much attention a few 

 years ago, when a station-master named Brown, on the Hobson's 

 Bay Railway at Elsternwick, was bitten by a small individual of 

 this species, which some workmen imagined they had killed, and 

 after carrying it some distance hanging across a stick, threw it upon 

 the platform, when Brown, taking it up, received a small wound in 

 the finger, and shortly showed the usual symptoms of fatal snake- 

 poisoning. In spite of the ordinary remedies, of excision of the 

 bitten part, rubbing ammonia on the wound, ligatures, and sucking 

 the wound, doses of brandy, galvanism, and being walked about by 

 assistants, he was so completely at the point of death that the two 

 surgeons attending him gave him up, his sight being gone, his lower 

 extremities completely paralysed, having dilated pupils, swollen 

 neck and face, and coma, from which he could not be roused. The 

 medical attendants, explaining to his friends that they could do no 

 more, and that his death might be looked for in a few minutes, 

 proposed to try what was then considered the dangerous remedy 



* " Recent Zoology and Palaeontology of Victoria," International Exhibition Essays, Mel- 

 bourne, 1866-7. 



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