Morning journal and courier., 1888-08-09
HTS TOUGH IS DEATH.

The Terribly Venomous Serpent that
 Lurks in the Tropics.
 From Harper's MonthIy.l
 Thsre are eight varieties. of him (the fer- de-lance), the most common being the grey speckled with black, precisely the color that enables the monster to hide himself among the roots of the trees by simply coiling about them and coneealing his triangular head. Sometimes he is 8 beautiful flower yellow; then he may never be distinguished from the bunch of bright bananas among which he hangs coiled; or he may be dark yellow or yelloWish brown, or the color of wine less speckled with pink and black, or perfect ash tint, or black with yellow belly, mould, of old bark, putrefying trees, of for est detritus. The iris of the eye is orange, with red flashes: at night it glows like incan- descent charcoal.
 And the fer-de-lance reigns absolute king over the mountains and the ravines; he is lord of the forests and the solitudes by day, and by night he extends his dominion over the public roads the familiar paths, the parks, and pleasure resorts. People must remain at hone after dark unless they dwell in the city itself; if you happen to be out visiting after sunset, only mile from town, your friends will caution you snxiously not to follow the bouleverd as you go back, and GO k0op aS clDSSlJ AS pOSSlDl0 VO tue very center of the path. Even in the brightest noon you cannot venture to enter the woods unesco1 5ed; you cannot trust your eyes to to detect danger; at any moment seeming branch, knot of lianas, pink or gray root, clump of pendent yellow fruit, may sud- denly take life, writhe, swell, stretch, spring, strike. Then you will need aid indeed, and most quickly; for within the space of a few heartbeats, the stricken flesh chills, tumehes, softens, changes color, spots violaceously, and an icy coldnees crawls through all the blood. If the physician or the pauseur arrives in time and no artery or vein has been directly pierced there is hope; but the danger is not passed when the life has been saved. Necrosis of the tissues begins; the flesh corrupts, tatters, tumbles frsn the boRe, and the coloT5 of it's putrefaetion are fris htful mockeries of the hues of vege- table death, of forest decomposition, the ghastly pinks and grays and yellows of rot ting trunks and roots melting back into the thick fetid clay that gave them birth. You 1 moulder as the trees moulder; you crumble and dissolves as dissolves the substance ot I the balatas and the palms and the aconata the Death of-the Woods has seized upon youi
 And this pestilence that walketh in dark ness, this destruction that wssteth at noon- 1 day, may not exercised. Each female pro- duces viviparously from forty to sixty young I at birth. The haunts of the creature are in many cases inaccessible, iaexplorable | it's multiplication is prodigious; it is enly ! the surplus of it's swarming that overpouIs into the cane fields, and makes the high roads perilous after sunset, yet to destroy three or four hundred thanatophidia on @ single small plantation during the lapse l of twelve months hes not bee uncom- I mon. The introduction of the mangouste l (the ichneumon) may, 1t is hoped, do
 much toward protecting the workers in the cane fields and on the cocoa and coffee plantations, but the mangouste's powers are limited, and the ocean of death i7 illi- | mitable.