[VENOMOUS SNAKES.]
BY W. L. ALLEN.
Venomous snakes are those which have two hollow teeth in the upper jaw through which they inject poison into the wound made by their bite. The great majority of snakes are not venomous, but nevertheless there are more venomous snakes in the world than most men really require.
There are two classes of venomous snakes—those whose bite is certain death, and those whose bite can be cured. The only venomous snake inhabiting Europe is the viper, but its bite is seldom fatal. In the United States, with the possible exception of New Mexico and Arizona, there are only three venomous snakes—the rattlesnake, the copperhead, and the moccasin. All our other snakes are harmless. In some places the copperhead is known as the flat-headed adder, but the other species of snakes, to which the name "adder" is often given by country people, are as harmless as the pretty little garter-snake.
Central and South America have many venomous snakes whose bite is always fatal. Among these the best-known are the coral-snake, the tuboba, and the dama blanca. A British naval vessel, on its way up a South American river a few years ago, anchored for the night, and a number of the officers thought they would go ashore, and sleep in a deserted shanty that stood on the bank, where they fancied that the air would be cooler than it was on board the vessel. When they reached the shanty, one of them said he thought he would go back to the ship, and all the others, with one exception, said that they would follow him. The officer who determined to stay swung his hammock from the beams of the roof, and was soon asleep. He woke early in the morning, and, to his horror, found that three snakes were sleeping on his body, and that others were hanging from the rafters or gliding over the floor. He recognized among them snakes whose bite meant death within an hour or two, and he did not dare to move a finger. He lay in his hammock until the sun grew warm and the snakes glided back to their holes. His companions had noticed that the place looked as if it was infested with snakes, but had cruelly refrained from warning him. The officer was one of the bravest men that ever lived, but he could never speak of his night among the snakes without a shudder.
In one of the West India Islands—Martinique—there is a snake called the lance-headed viper, which is almost as deadly as the coral-snake. The East Indies are full of venomous snakes, and in British India nearly twenty thousand persons are killed every year by snake bites. Of the East Indian snakes whose bite is incurable the cobra is the most numerous, but the diamond snake, the tubora, and the ophiophagus are also the cause of a great many deaths. The British government has offered a large reward for the discovery of an antidote to the poison of the cobra, but no one has yet been able to claim it.
Africa, like all tropical countries, has many species of venomous snakes. The horned cerastes is the snake from whose bite Cleopatra is said to have died, and from its small size, and its habit of burying itself all but its head in the sand, it is peculiarly dreaded by the natives. The ugliest of these snakes is the great puff-adder, which often grows to the length of five or six feet, and whose poison is used by the natives in making poisoned arrows.
It is a very curious fact that the poison of venomous snakes can not be distinguished by the chemist from the white of an egg. And yet one kind of snake poison will produce an effect entirely unlike that produced by another kind. The blood of an animal bitten by a cobra is decomposed and turned into a thin, watery, straw-colored fluid, while the blood of an animal bitten by a coral-snake is solidified, and looks very much like currant jelly. Nevertheless, the poison of the cobra and that of the coral-snake seem to be precisely alike when analyzed by the chemist, and are apparently composed of the same substances in the same proportion as is the white of an egg.