OF THE OLANDS. 
49 
more speedily according as the quantity of the poison has 
been considerable, and has been introduced into a part of 
the body abounding in sanguiferous vessels. Hence the 
reason why the bite of a large species is more dangerous 
than that of the small, and why a deep puncture, or one 
in a vein, is almost always mortal, whilst it is often not 
followed by any bad consequence, where it only reaches 
hard and callous parts of the body.^ We must, however, 
attribute the greater or less activity of the poison to seve- 
ral other causes than those already cited. Sometimes it 
is but a single tooth which enters the flesh, at other times 
both instil their venom ; the fangs penetrate with more 
facility in a slender part of the body, as a finger, than in 
the thigh or the trunk. Serpents, also, in biting several 
times, expend their venom, so that the last wounds are 
less dangerous than the first. We must also take into 
account the size of the animal bitten, as compared to that 
of the serpent ; in Europe, man rarely perishes from the 
bite of our viper ; it requires from three to four vipers to 
kill a horse or an ox, whilst a single bite is sufficient to 
kill in a short time one of the small mammifera. It is not 
so in tropical countries, where a bite from a large venom- 
ous snake has generally fatal efiects in man and in other 
animals. Thus, it may be considered as a law, that the 
activity of the poison augments with the warmth of the 
climate ; that the bite is more dangerous according to the 
quantity of the poison instilled into the wound, and ac- 
cording as the animal that inflicted the wound, and its 
victim, were agitated by violent emotions. Innumerable 
experiments have been instituted to determine the degree 
of activity of the poison in different species of serpents, and 
^ The poison has much less effect on cold-blooded animals than on 
mammals or on birds ; on most of the invertebrata it produces no effect 
whatever. These facts shew that the term poison is not always used in 
its primitive sense, hut rather in a relative sense, and more particularly 
with relation to the effects which this fluid produces on man or on animals 
with red blood. This circumstance appears to have given rise to the 
opinion advanced by some naturalists, that the viper itself, and other 
animals, as the Anguis fragilis or slow-worm, the buzzard, were proof 
against the bites of venomous snakes : the alleged facts have never been 
proved by any positive experiments. 
E 
