APPENDIX, 
here. Tliough extremely poifonous, their fize and bright yel- 
low colmir renders it eafy to avoid them. They are from four 
to eight feet in length. The Yellow Snake is moftly found in 
rat- holes. After eating thefe animals, which form the chief 
part of its food, it takes poflefTion of their holes : this renders 
it dangerous for travellers to lie down in any place where there 
are traces of this deftrudive reptile* 
The Hottentots procure the poifon of this fnake by diiTeding 
the bag from its mouth, and dipping linews, which they after- 
wards tie on the points of their arrows, in the liquid it contains. 
The PulF Adder, which has its name from blowing itfelf up 
to near a foot in circumference, is of a greyifli colour, and 
about three feet and a half in length : it is conliderably thicker 
than any I ever faw in that country : its head is large and flat ; 
the poifon-teeth about an inch long, and hooked. The Puff 
Adder is extremely dangerous to cattle. In one of my excur- 
fions in the country, a horfe of mine was bit by one of them 
in the mouth, while grazing, and furvived the wound but two 
days. 
The Spring Adder is a very dangerous, but uncommon 
fnake; it is jet black, with white fpots, from three to four 
feet long, and proportionably thick. When Colonel Gordon 
(now Commander in chief at the Cape) was in that coun- 
try, in the year feventeen hundred and feventy-five, he men- 
tioned to me a circumilance of his having met two flave boys 
