f the skin,
but remains attached.

Thus for each shedding a new joint or ring is added to the rattle. How
often the shedding takes place depends on various circumstances and
may occur an uncertain number of times each year. Such a rattle,
loose-jointed as it is, is rather brittle and the tip of the sounding
instrument is easily broken and lost. It will therefore be easily
understood that the common notion that a rattlesnake's age can be told
by the number of the rings in its rattle is absolutely erroneous.
Another equally common and equally erroneous notion relates to the
tongue of the snake, which the ignorant often term its "sting" and
which they believe to be the death-dealing instrument. Of course, the
soft, forked tongue which constantly darts out and in of the snake's
mouth is perfectly harmless. It serves rather as a "feeler" than as a
taste organ. The wound is inflicted by a pair of large, curved, teeth
or fangs, in the upper jaw. These fangs are hollow and connected by a
duct with the gland on the side of the head, in which the poison is
formed. Pressure on this gland at the time of the strike--for our
poisonous snakes strike rather than bite--squirts the poison into the
wound like a hypodermic syringe. The fangs when shed or damaged are
replaced within a short time with new ones, so that a poisonous snake
can only be made harmless for a short period by breaking them off.
Only in exceptional cases need snake bites prove fatal. It is
estimated that in North America only about two persons in a hundred
bitten are killed by the poison, though many more die from
carelessness or bad treatment, the worst of which is the filling up
with whiskey, which aids the poison rather than counteracts it. The
essential things in case of snake bite are: (1) keeping one's wits;
(2) tying a string, or the like, tightly around the wounded limb
between the wound and the heart, and loosening it about once in
fifteen minutes, so as to admit the poison slowly into the
circulation; (3) making the wound bleed freely by enlarging it with a
knife or otherwise; (4) if permanganate of potash be handy it should
at once be applied to the {101} wound; (5) treat the wound as
antiseptically as it is possible with the means at hand and hurry to a
doctor.

[Illustration: Copperhead]

The danger depends greatly on the amount of the poison injected, hence
upon the size of the snake. It is for this reason that the big Florida
rattlesnakes which