ied in fifteen minutes after being struck by a big rattlesnake
which I had in a box, although I injected him with a carefully measured
dose of the serum. Another one lived several hours, and made a hard
struggle. I thought at one time he might pull through, but it was no
use. He joined his friend in dog heaven after giving his final kick four
hours and fifteen minutes after he and the snake had been introduced to
each other.

"The third one was a half-breed bull bitch with lots of vitality. I
tried to make this one immune by injecting a dose of the serum
twenty-four hours before, and again immediately after she was struck by
the snake, but she did not do as well as the other one, and died in
three hours and sixteen minutes. All these dogs seemed to die from
inability to breathe. The poison apparently acts on the respiratory
centres rather than directly on the heart. They all vomited just before
they died."

"Have you never found out what the Indians use as an antidote?" I asked.

"No, I have tried, but they keep it a carefully guarded secret. One
reason why I believe that the secret is so carefully preserved is
because they have no antidote, and the whole thing is a bluff.

"You see," continued the collector, "in my wanderings about the country
I have run across a great many queer people, and as you seem interested
in this subject, I will tell you an incident which happened while I was
out at camp one time at the White Tanks, catching gila monsters, horned
toads, etc.

"I remember the year well, because I had a lot of trouble with a very
useless assistant of mine, whom I sent to Central America to collect for
me. Among the birds he brought back were a lot of skins of the blue
chatterer--the one with the purple throat, you know. He knew I was
anxious to get new species, so he thought he would be smart and make
some for me. So he manufactured five, all with faked labels on, showing
that each species was taken at different altitudes. Unfortunately he
commenced too high, and the mountains in the vicinity where he
collected, and where the labels indicated that the birds were taken,
lacked several hundred feet of the necessary altitude for two of the
species, so that if his labels were correct he must have shot them out
of a balloon.

"They all looked alike except about the throat and head. One lot had a
gold band across the breast, another had the whole throat gold, others
had gold stripes or spots. I believe he produ