a wax taper, or even approach the waters of the holy font.  These horrors have been laid bare, their cause and effect explained, and tests discovered whereby they may be detected, providing the law with a shield that protects even the humblest individual.  Great as the science is, however, it is yet far removed from perfection; and there are substances so mysterious, subtle, and dangerous as to set the most delicate tests and powerful lenses at naught, while carrying death most horrible in their train; and chief of these are the products of Nature’s laboratory, that provides some sixty species of serpents with their deadly venom, enabling them in spite of sluggish forms and retiring habits to secure abundant prey and resent mischievous molestation.  The hideous trigonocephalus has forced the introduction and acclimation of the mongoose to the cane fields of the Western tropics; the tiger snake (Heplocephalus curtus) is the terror of Australian plains; the fer de lance (Craspedocephalus lanceolatus) renders the paradise of Martinique almost uninhabitable; the tic paloonga (Daboii russelli) is the scourge of Cinghalese coffee estates; the giant ehlouhlo of Natal (unclassified) by its presence secures a forbidding waste for miles about; the far famed cobra de capello (Naja tripudians) ravages British India in a death ratio of one-seventh of one per cent. of the dense population, annually, and is the more dangerous in that an assumed sacred character secures it largely from molestation and retributive justice; and in Europe and America we have vipers, rattlesnakes, copperheads, and moccasins (viperinae and crotalidae), that if a less degree fatal, are still a source of dread and annoyance.  All these forms exhibit in general like ways and like habits, and if the venom of all be not generically identical, the physiological and toxicological phenomena arising therefrom render them practically and specifically so.  Indeed, their attributes appear to be mere modifications arising from difference in age, size, development, climate, latitude, seasons, and enforced habits, aided perhaps by idiosyncrasies and the incidents and accidents of life.

In delicacy of organism and perfection in mechanism and precision, the inoculatory apparatus of the venomous reptile excels the most exquisite appliances devised by the surgical implement maker’s art, and it is doubtful whether it can ever be rivaled by the hand of man.  The mouth of the serpent is an object for the closest study, presenting as it does a series of independent actions, whereby the bones composing the upper jaw and palate are loosely articulated, or rather attached, to one another by elastic and expansive ligaments, whereby the aperture is made conformatory, or enlarged at will—­any one part being untrammeled and unimpeded in its action by its fellows.  The recurved, hook-like teeth are thus isolated in application, and each venom fang independent of its rival when so desired, and it becomes possible to reach points and recesses seemingly inaccessible.