here. Though extremely poifonous, their fize and bright yellow colour renders it eafy to avoid them. They are from four to eight feet in length. The Yellow Snake is moftly found in rat-holes. After eating thefe animals, which form the chief part of its food, it takes polfeffion of their holes: this renders it dangerous for travellers to lie down in any place where there are traces of this deftrudlive reptile. The Hottentots procure the poifon of this fnake by diffedting the bag from its mouth, and dipping iinewS, which they afterwards tie on the points of their arrows, in the liquid it contains. The Puff Adder, which has its name from blowing itfelf up to near a foot in circumference, is of a greylih colour, and about three feet and a half in length : it is coniiderably thicker than any other I ever faw in that country: its head is large and flat; the poifon-teeth about an inch long, and hooked. The Puff Adder is very dangerous to cattle. In one of my excur- flons in the country, ahorfe of mine was bit by one of them in the mouth, while grazing, and futvived the wound but two days. The Spring Adder is a very dangerous, but uncommon fnake ; it is jet black, with white fpots, from three to four feet long, and proportionably thick. When Colonel Gordon (now Commander in chief at the Cape) was in that country, in the year feventeen hundred and feventy-five, he mentioned to me a circumftance of his having met two flave-boys chafed by a Spring Adder, which feemed to be gaining ground upon them, when he ihot it through the middle. The Night Snake, which is more beautiful than any of the others, is from eighteen to twenty inches long, and very thin: it is belted with black, red, and yellow; and when near, at night, has the appearance of fire. The Hottentots call it Killmen. Thefe fix fpecies of ferpents, about the Cape of Good Hope, I had the opportunity of feeing ; and brought home fpecimens of molt of them, preferved in fpirits, for further infpedtion. I however regret much, that as my chief objedt was the collection of plants, I had it not in my power to remain long enough in any one place to make fuch experiments on their feveral poifons as might have enabled me to have given a clear account of their effedts from my own dbfervation. There are, I have no doubt, many other fnakes in that country with which we are as yet unacquainted. One, which is called the Spoog Slang, or Spitting Snake, has been mentioned to me by the inhabitants of the country, who fay it will throw its poifon to the diftance of feveral yards; and that people have been blinded by th em ; but this never came under my own infpedtion. The Black, or Rock Scorpion, is nearly as venomous as any of the ferpent tribe. A farmer who refided at a place, called the Parle, near the Cape, was flung by one in the foot, during my flay in the country, and died in a few hours. Dodtor Syde, one of the Cape phyilcians, informed me that feveral people had been brought to him flung, by fcorpions, and that he found oil to be the beft antidote he ever tried. The
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