Some Rattlesnake Fallacies.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 76

Some Rattlesnake Fallacies.

A common misconception which is apt to) lead to serious accidents is the belief that a ratter is rendered perfectly harmless, so that it can be handled with impunity, by the removal of its poison fangs. These fangs, two in number, are situated' on the upper jaw, and lie flat except when the serpent strikes, when they become ere'C and the closing the jaws compresses the poison glands and injects the venom through minute openings in them. In striking its prey (for whatever charm the serpent may employ to get its victim within. easy reach it relies upon the venom to give the ecup de grace), these fanga m.a-v often be broken, and Nature has provided a full supply of reserve weapons which lie dormant in the gums, and which within two weeks will develop and replace the injured fang. An acquaintance who returned from a hunting 1 trip with 25 full-grown rattlers in a box kept them in his office for two months, confined behind a coarse-meshed) wire screen. He handled them most careiessly. as he had extracted the poison fangs. but when shown that each of them had developed a perfect pair of new ones ther© was a sudden rise in tho local snake mevrtalitv. One was preserved and sent to the Bronx Zoo. where it shortly afterward ?av« hirth to a Jarge litter of voting ones, which' could pa si I v have crawled through th» screen behind which the mother had beea kept. As each of them possessed the poison apparatus in full commission and was without the power to rattle, they would' have beer, even more dangerous than adult! snakps. Professional snake-hand'ers are ofteni icmorant of t'lis power to quickly replace fans? possessed by rattlers, and tihis ignorance led ro a serious accident to one of their ar Bo^tock's. at Coney Island, last rear- Ho was badly bitten and narrowly escaped death, his recovery being attributedl to the generous amount of whisky which! vus immediately administered to him, which illustrates another mistaken idea. It is a pity to shatter a pleasant illusion, but alcohol, except in very small doses, is harmful rather than beneficial as an antidote to snakebite poison. As a matter of fact, a though the symptoms of rattlesnake poisoning are most na'nful and alarming, an adult rarely dies from the bite of the variety common in, the North. The diamond-backs of tho South attain a much larger size, and 1 consequently inject more venom, and their bit© is prcnortionatolv more dangerous.— Francio Metcalfe, in Outing Ted: "Does Gavboy believe in the absent treatment?" Ned: "He must. It costs him a pretty penny to keep his wife away in the country all summer." " H— m, I think I've seen you here. before on a similar charge," said a magistrate who has recently conceaJed his paucity of hair beneath a wig. "No, yo lr Honor, never !" answered the woman in, the dock, a "drunk and disorderly." "Tho last time I was up it was afore a, bald-headed old gen'leman not a bit Ike you !" — The parish priest had dropped in to sco one of his flock, and. ,to prove ria kindly interest in the family and all its members, he began to ask one of the little colleens how she was progressing at school. The usual questions as to tho fcpelling of the interesting word "cat," and so forth, wore put and answered. Then _t lie priest turned to a more abstruse subject, geography. "Now tell me, dear, what is a lake?" he asked. The little maiden puckered her brows in thought for a, moment. Then she said : "Plaze, yer rireronce, it's a kettle wid a hole 'in it."