208 A GREAT ACQUISITION.

people walked upon them and crushed them with-
out paying any attention to the fact. ‘The business
of destroying them was left to the pigs, the cats,
and even the fowls. They fell resolutely on the
head of the reptile and devoured it, without feeling
any evil result.”

At Quihi, a tiger-hunter killed a rattlesnake,
which he had mistaken for a dead tree. It mea-
sured 17 feet in length, 18 inches in circumference,
and was furnished with twenty-five rings or rattles.
One day the Abbé’s companion went to the barn
for some maize and took up a serpent in his hand,
mistaking it for a blade of corn; another day a
cobra de capello glided into the school-room, and
was on the point of biting one of the children,
when it was killed by the priest with a blow of a
stick. A horse they possessed was one evening
missing, and they set out to search forhim. Night
was coming on apace, and, after a long hunt, the
animal was still non est inventus. ‘“ All at once,”
the Abbé says, ‘‘I perceived at my feet, and gliding
from under the grass where he had lain concealed,
a rattlesnake of about two yards in length. I was
about to take to my heels, when I bethought me
that this serpent captured alive would be a great
acquisition to my collection of reptiles, or, other-
wise, his skin would make a grand pair of slippers
for my mother. Quick as thought I rushed upon