156

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

fangs against the leather, the greater was the issue of poison,■which I could plainly see flowing from the hole near thepoint of the tooth, and along the grooves, so as to cover a ur-face of my boot equal to the size of a sixpence.

Behind the main fangs, on each of the hones above spokenof, there are five other fangs, diminishing in size as theyrecede from the main ones. These take and supply theplace of the latter in case of rupture or extirpation, so thatany person depending on the fact of having broken or ex-tracted the fangs of a viper, would soon after find, to hiscost, that they had been renewed.

The jaws of vipers and of serpents in general, are notconnected directly together like the joint of a pair of com-passes, but with an intervening bone, articulating with theupper and lower jaw, like the connexions between the twohalves of a parallel ruler. Thus their mouths can open tothe extent of swallowing a body larger than themselves.

Taken internally, the poison of the viper is not injurious,at least to any violent degree. I swallowed the poisonextracted from two full-grown vipers, amounting in quan-tity to about four large drops ; the weight I cannot state.It caused no new sensation whatever.

One morning in July, at nine o’clock, I was bitten in theindex finger of the left hand by a viper, whose head I wasimmersing into a glass of water, that it might drink. Isuppose I must have hurt it against the edge of the glass,for it turned round and bit me as described. I had justbeen reading a recent number of the Philosophical Transac-tions , in which was a paper on the poison of the viper, andthe positive assurance that olive oil externally and internally,was a certain specific remedy for the poison of the viper.Although I had had the most clear and satisfactory proofs ofthe efficacy of the nitrate of silver, in an unlucky instant Itook it into my head to try the oil. So tying a string round