COUNTRY LIFE
ALTHOUGH I have often heard of people being bitten by adders, I have not heard of one who has died as a result. No doubt people die from snakebite in this country, but they also die from wasp.. stings. Last year in our locality a farmer's son was bitten when he and his mother sat down to rest on a bank on their way home from the bus-stop. The boy hovered on the brink of death for a while, but recovered. I believe the serum had to come from some distance, but it came in time. My father once lost a gun-dog that ran in to retrieve an adder hi had shot. The severed head of the snake bit the dog in the lip. Even a dog will recover e permanganate of potash is at hand. Recently I had a letter from a lady who lives near Plymouth stating that she thought adders were not so common as they had been in her childhood. She gave an account of a baby born to a woman who had been bitten by an adder. According to hearsay at the time, the baby was said to crawl and hiss like a snake and was kept in an out- house until it died. Legends of the kind are endless. There have been giant snakes that left great tracks in the grass in all parts of the country. Time puts feet to their length and inches to their girth until belief can be stretched no farther.
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