Why Venomous Reptiles Do Not Flourish Here.-The Reason India is Infested With Snakes-Reptiles Driving an Army Back-The American Pioneers Best Friend-A Fight Between a Sow and Rattlesnake.
The Editor of the New York Sun:
    Sir: An editorial published in the Sun on the subject of the terrible mortality from snake bites in India, disclosed some startling facts; the most surprising of which is the great number of persons who perish annually in British India from attacks by these reptiles, one authority averring that “in some years as many as 20,000 people are killed by snakes in Hindostan alone.”
    From what we read of India, it would seem that the most densely populated parts of that country are the most infested with poisonous reptiles; in other words, where there are the most people there the greatest number of snakes are to be found. Exactly the reverse of this is the case in America, so far as our own country extends, for here the more numerous the population, the fewer the snakes of the fatal kind, though we have probably a greater variety of deadly serpents than exists in any other quarter of the globe. Among those may be onumerated the several species of moccasin, the copperhead, and the purely American reptile, the rattlesnake, which M. Buffon, in his article on le serpent a conette, says inhabits nearly all the countries of the new world. Besides these and other varieties may be noticed the cotton mouth of the marshes of the Lower Mississippi, a dark, short, muscular viper, with the inside of its mouth perfectly white, which lurks in swampy places, for whose bite no antidote is known, but is quickly followed by certain death.
    There are two ways of accounting for the superabundance of snakes in India. One is by the superstitious veneration of the Hindoos for the most deadly serpants, which leaves them unmolested, and enables them to multiply without limit. Some such result as this must also have been realized in Egypt, where all sorts of reptiles were worshiped. Josephus tells us that Moses was in the military service of Pharaoh before he quarreled with that potentate. In one of his expeditions against the Nubians his army was so harrassed by the serpents which swarmed the line of his march up the Nile, that he lost more men by snake-bites than from the darts of the Nubians. Indeed, his army, according to this authority, on one or two occasions was nearly put to rout by venomous snakes.
    The other and more convincing reason for the vast numbers of snakes in India is the scarcity of hogs in a country where the use of swine’s flesh is prohibited as an article of food. Neither the Hindoo nor the Mahometan religion permits the eating of pork in any form. The country is thus deprived of a most efficient auxiliary in the destruction of these pests. The hog is the mortal enemy of snakes. He kills them because he hates them, and devours them when dead. Wherever the increase of this usuful animal is encouraged, he compensates society for its protection by thus abating a harmful nuisance. But the Hindoo despises the hog while he patronizes the snake, and gets rewarded for his preference by his race being stung to death at the rate of 20,000 annually.
    The Anglo-Saxon or American differs from the effete East Indian in this most other respects. He kills the snake and fosters the hog, who is decidedly the most invetorate snakekiller of the two. When the Anglo-American undertakes the settlement of a new country he wants three things above all others-an axe, a wife, and a hog. If he chances to go into the wilderness alone, however, the hog soon follows as an inevitable consequence. Just in proportion as the hog multiplies and increases in a newly-settled country, in the same ratio do serpents and poisonous reptiles disappear. It is not meant to be implied that any such motive as snake-killing enters into the calculations of the frontiersman in raising hogs. In general, he does not give the snakes that may infest his neighborhood a thought. He kills them when they come his way, and forgets them. The hog does the most of that sort of work. He is a most industrious forager, always rooting around in quest of something to eat. In his incessant search for provender he oftentimes disturbs the snake in his lair, who, as a rule, would perfer to be left along; but the hog won’t let him alone, but snaps him between his teeth, crushes, and devoures him.
    There are also active enemies of the snake such as deer, elk, etc. which kill by crushing him beneath their sharp hoofs. But these animals only destroy the snake when he comes in their way. The hog goes at him with the two-fold incentive of destroying an enemy and devouring him. The result is the snakes give up the contest after a while and glide off to some rocky fastness of impenetrable fen. The hog is almost impervious to the bite of the most deadly serpent. Like the hero of Greek fable, he has but one assailable spot, which lies, not in his heel, but in his neck. If the snake chances to strike him on the main artery, where it passes through the neck near the skin, the hog dies. If he strikes him at any other point, the wound amounts to no more than the prick of a pin would, the virus taking no effect whatever. The quadrupod seems to be aware of this one danger, and guards against it with the skill of a veteran warrior.
    The writer once witnessed a combat between a sow and a rattlesnake of the largest kind, his attention being attracted to the scene, by the angry screams of the hog. The snake lay in coil beneath a spreading live oak. The broad, combative head was raised rigidly about six inchs over his coiled body, his eyes bright as diamonds, flashed fury, and his forked tongue darting defiance at his enemy. Every muscle now in tension, could be traced beneath his skin, while his tail slightly erected and tremulous with nervous energy, gave forth from the tapering rattle at its extremity that peculiar, sharp, ringing sound a person never forgets who has heard it once. The sow, with bristies erect and tusks bare, circled round the snake, gnashing her teeth, grunting and snarling at him with rage. She showed game, but nothing like the nerve of her sinewy antagonist. The sow made divers demonstrations or feints, to which the snake responded by stricking from half coil, but each time instantly recovering himself. At length; the sow coming within his reach, the snake made a desperate spring of his entire length; fastening his fangs in her fore-leg as she sprang away from him. The sow gave as agonized squeal, but quickly disingaged herself, and before the snake could recover his coil her foot was on his neck, and in another instant she had snapped off his head.
    The Anglo-American is a distinguished civilizer, no-doubt, but he could not well do without the hog, which animal gives him immunity from the bites of deadly snakes. Let the Hindoo discard some of his absurd traditional prejudices, and take the hog into favor.
                                                                                                  William L. Norvell.,
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