WHERE SNAKES ABOUND.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLIII, Issue 2286, 26 February 1912, Page 2

WHERE SNAKES ABOUND.

New South Wales is infested with a great number of poisonous snakes. "I never was much afraid of snakes," observed a gentleman recently returned home after spending several years in that country, " but on one or two occasions in my life I have come into a little closer contact with those venomouts reptiles than I would care to go through again. " One afternoon as I was crossing my garden carrying a glass of water, I suddenly felt what I knew t-.» be a snake wind itself around my leg. The next moment I heard a* angry hiss, and felt a sharp blow strike the glass in my hand. Involuntarily I •dropped the glass, and leaped back. By this movement I released the snake on whose tail I had been standing, and it glided away in the grass. " At another time 1 was sitting alone at a table on which stood a glass of milk. I was leaning forward with my head buried in my hands. All at once my attention was arrested by the sound of some cnimal lapping the milki from the glass. Thinking it was the cat, I reached out my hand to pat her, but to my horror my hand camo in contact with the cold, clammy body of a snake. I started to my fret with a cTy of alarm, and snatching my cane from ft corner killed tie reptile, which measured over seven feet in lengtla."