366 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
and who had lagged a great way behind, had the 
luck to thrust his head into the same wasps' nest, 
and also got considerably stung. ... I have been 
twice stung by the common house scorpion, but 
the pain was not greater than that produced by an 
English wasp. There is a larger kind whose sting 
is said to be far worse. The bite of the common 
Scolopendra (centipede) is about equal to that of 
the scorpion, but I have never been bitten by the 
immense Scolopendra that is seen in heaps of 
timber or among rubbish in deserted houses.^ 
Up to the present date (August 1853) I have 
through God's mercy been preserved from the bites 
of venomous snakes, nor have I yet seen any one 
under the actual influence of a snake-bite, though 
people have been bitten in my very near neigh- 
bourhood. The venomous jararaca is frequent 
in caapoeras and in rubbishy places near houses 
through all the Rio Negro. At Panure (on the 
Uaupes) I was one afternoon putting dry paper 
to my plants, and I had a quantity spread out 
drying in front of my house, when chancing to look 
through the open door, I saw what seemed to be a 
large greenish beetle bobbing about among the 
sheets, and I bolted out to seize on it ; but for- 
tunately ere doing this I discovered what I took 
for a beetle was the head of a jararaca. Like 
most venomous snakes, this is fortunately very 
sluggish in its movements, and I had no difficulty 
in killing it with a stick which was at hand. A 
few days afterwards while similarly engaged I 
^ Among some planks piled up by a sawpit at Tomo I found a Scolopendra 
II inches long, i inch broad. 
