164 
APPENDIX. 
here. Though extremely poifonous, their hze and bright yel¬ 
low colour renders it eafy to avoid them. They are from four 
to eight feet in length. The Yellow Snake is moftly found in 
Tat-holes. After eating thefe animals, which form the chief 
part of its food, it takes pofieffion 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 dlfleding 
the bag from its mouth, and dipping finews, which they after¬ 
wards tie on the points of their arrows, in the liquid it contains. 
The Puff Adder, which has its name from blowing itfelf up 
to near a foot in circumference, is of a grey iff 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- 
flons 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-flve, he men¬ 
tioned to me a circumftance of his having met two flave boys 
