There is much to stir the imagination in the picture of an angry, writhing, poisonous snake pinned firmly to the operating table in the reptile house at the Zoo, and encouraged by a scientist to strike at a bit of parchment covering a glass retainer. Instead of destroying, the snake is thus enlisted in the work of saving human life.

From the snake house his poison is shipped to the Harvard laboratory, and thence to Brazil, where the Brazilian government runs a large serum plant. Long years of study have developed a method of procuring serum by injecting minute quantities of the poison of a given species into a horse. Gradually, the dos s are increased, until its blood begins to manufacture an antidote to this special poison and eventually becomes immune to it. From the blood of the horse the antidote is extracted, and this in turn is preserved and sent to hospitals so that it may be used to cure persons suffering from snake bite.

The reason that Brazil leads the world in this particular field of science is that over 15,000 persons are said to be killed there each year by poisonous snakes. This is an even greater figure, proportionately, than in India, for although the total number of deaths in India from cobras and other poisonous snakes has ranged as high as 25,000 for the last year they were 19,396--the population is much greater than Brazil's. --New York Tribune