TOBACCO KILLS RATTLE SNAKES.
AFTER all that was suffered from poisonous reptiles, it was proved to a demonstration that no animal is so poisonous as man, carrying more poison in his mouth than any other creature. He can poison a venomous serpent quicker than the serpent can poison him. Martin Root and two other young men, chopping together, saw a rattle snake, set a fork over his neck, and put in his mouth a new quid from one of their mouths. They raised the fork, and the poor creature did not crawl more than his length before he convulsed, swelled up and died, poisoned to death by virus from the mouth of one of the lords of creation. Deacon Bayes and Worthy Pratt tried the same experiment upon copper-heads, with the same results. Many others killed venomous reptiles in the same way, and one man pretended that by the moderate use, he had taught a copper-head to take tobacco without injury.—Hist. of Ohio, by Henry Howe, 1856, pp. 297, 298.