A GREAT SNAKE COLONY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1264, 21 May 1896, Page 39

A GREAT SNAKE COLONY.

Mr ,T. McGarvie Smith, an eminent bacteriologist of Sydney, is the proprietor of probably the greatest collection of snakes ill the world. He is in the business partly for scientific purposes and partly for business. Jle advertised some time ago for 500 venomous reptiles, but one publisher declined to permit the advertisement until he had satisfied himself of tho sanity of tho scientist.

The different spocies of venomous snakes in Australia, so far as known, number 42, and Mr Smith has specimens of all of them. The poison extracted from the reptiles is largely used in the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Mr Smith is an enthusiast on the subject of snakes, and regards them as tho most wonderful of living creatures. 110 lias in his collection serpents that havo gone nearly a year without food and are still fat. lie has injected somo of their own poison into them without the slightest ill effects to them. As a result of his investigations ho has established the fact that a non-poisonous snako is not affected in any way by the poison of tho venomous species. “ Why,” says Smith, “it does not kill one of its own species while it is so fatal to other creatures is one of the mysteries of tho Almighty which wo cannot unravel.”