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49 CHAPTER II.

snake that it will be most advantageous, for various reasons, to consider next is the Daboia Russellii, an extremely poisonous snake, found in great abundance in Bengal proper, in many other parts of India, and in Ceylon. It is a very fierce snake, striking after a little provocation with deadly precision. It has a very stridulous noisy hiss. It belongs to the viperine family of snakes, of which it is a typical member. For this reason it is taken here as an example of a viperine snake in the same way that the cobra was taken as the representative of the colubrine family. It will be best to follow the same plan that was adopted in cobra-poisoning, detailing first the symptoms of a sufficient number of cases of daboia-poisoning to elicit all the points of importance, and then to discuss the conditions on which the fatal results depend. There does not 4