THE HOME OF THE ALLIGATOR 367 
he will look as threatening and deadly as any animal could, but, unless 
he be shedding, he will seldom strike if he can avoid it by escaping from 
his tormentors. 
Although he had been handling and collecting snakes for thirty 
years, my guide had, until this trip, never been bitten by a rattler. One 
morning he had caught, in a noose at the end of a pole, a large rattler 
that was shedding and was, therefore, very vicious. Where a snake 
was lying in an inaccessible place, or was, as in this case, unusually 

LEAVES OF THE “ CABBAGH PALMETTO.” 
vicious, a noose was generally used and the snake thus transferred to 
a bag carried for the purpose. As he was being lowered into the bag, 
this particular snake gave a sudden twist and one of his poison fangs 
cut a long gash in the hand of his captor. Fortunately for the man, 
only the extreme tip of the fang penetrated the skin, so that little or no 
poison was injected. The guide always carried a hypodermic syringe 
for just such emergencies, so that a dose of potasium permanganate 
was soon injected into the wound, and no ill effects from the bite 
were felt. 
Although the bite of these rattlers is not necessarily fatal to man, 
almost any one in that region can tell of one or more cases where death 
has followed within a few hours of the time that the wound was 
inflicted. 
