[Footnote 1:  Presumably the Natal ombozi, or spitting cobra, Naja
  haemachites, who is fully equal to the feat described.]

With the infliction of the stroke and expression of its venom, the creature usually attempts to reverse its fangs in the wound, thereby dragging through and lacerating the flesh; an ingenious bit of devilishness hardly to be expected from so low a form of organism; but its frequent neglect proves it by no means mechanical, and it frequently occurs that the animal bitten drags the reptile after it a short distance, or causes it to leave its fangs in the wound.  Some serpents also, as the fer de lance, black mamba, and water moccasin, are apparently actuated by most vindictive motives, and coil themselves about the part bitten, clinging with leech-like tenacity and resisting all attempts at removal.  Two gentlemen of San Antonio, Texas,[2] who were bitten by rattlesnakes, subsequently asserted that after having inflicted all possible injury, the reptiles scampered away with unmistakable manifestations of pleasure.  “Snakes,” remarked one of the victims, “usually glide smoothly away with the entire body prone to the ground; but the fellow I encountered traveled off with an up and down wave-like motion, as if thrilled with delight, and then, getting under a large rock where he was safe from pursuit, he turned, and raising his head aloft waved it to and fro, as if saying.  ’Don’t you feel good now?’ It would require but a brief stretch of the imagination to constitute that serpent a veritable descendant of the old Devil himself.”

  [Footnote 2:  On the authority of N.A.  Taylor and H.F.  McDaniels.]

As the first blow commonly exhausts the receptacle of the duct, a second (the venom being more or less mingled and diluted by the salivary secretion) is comparatively less fatal in results; and each successive repetition correspondingly inoffensive until finally nothing but pure mucus is ejected.  Nevertheless, when thoroughly aroused, the reptile is enabled to constantly hurl a secretion, since both rage and hunger swell the glands to enormous size, and stimulate to extraordinary activity—­a fortuitous circumstance to which many an unfortunate is doubtless indebted for his life.  The removal of a fang, however, affects its gland to a degree that it becomes almost inoperative, until such a time as a new tooth is grown, and again calls it into action, which is commonly but a few weeks at most; and a person purchasing a poisonous serpent under the supposition that it has been rendered innocuous, will do well to keep watch of its mouth lest he be some time taken unaware.  It may be rendered permanently harmless, however, by first removing the fang, and then cauterizing the duct by means of a needle or wire, heated to redness; when for experimental purposes the gland may be stimulated, and the virus drawn off by means of a fine-pointed syringe.