called the button, and being narrowed at the base and more strongly built than the rest of the epidermis it is not shed with the rest of 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
An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|Handbook for Boys.djvu/121}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |  |
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 frequently by enlarging it with a knife or otherwise; (4) if permanganate of potash be handy it should at once be applied to the
