"The rattle is usually about half an inch in breadth, one quarter of an inch in thickness, and each joint about half an inch long. The joint consists of a number of little cases of a dry, horny substance, inclosed one within another; and not only the outermost of these little cases articulates with the outermost case of the contiguous joint, but each case, even to the smallest one of all, at the inside, is connected by a sort of joint with the corresponding case in the next joint of the rattle. The little cases or shells lie very loosely within one another, and the noise proceeds from their dry and hard coats striking one against the other. It is said that the animal joins a fresh joint to its rattle every year. Of this, however, I have great doubts; for the largest snakes are frequently found to have the fewest joints to their rattles. A medical gentleman in the neighborhood of Newmarket had a rattle in his possession which contained no less than thirty-two joints; yet the snake from which it was taken scarcely measured five feet. Rattlesnakes, however, of the same kind, and in the same part of the country, have been found of a greater length with not more than ten rattles."--Weld, p. 409. "Man or animals bitten by the rattlesnake expire in extreme agony; the tongue swells to an enormous size, the blood turns black, and, all the extremities becoming cold, gangrene ensues, and is speedily succeeded by death. The remedies in common use are the _Polygala seneca_ or _Aristolochia serpentaria_, employed as a decoction. Sometimes scarification, or cauterizing the wound with a burning iron, if immediate in their application, is attended with success. The Indians' favorite remedy is sucking the wound, which in a slight bite is generally successful. Mr. Catesby, by traveling much among the Indians, had frequent opportunities of seeing the direful effects of the bite inflicted by these snakes. He seems to consider that the success of any remedy is owing more to the force of nature or to the slightness of the bite than to any other cause. He has known persons bitten to survive without assistance for many hours; but where a rattlesnake with full force penetrates with his deadly fangs into a vein or artery, inevitable death ensues, and that, as he has often seen, in less than two minutes. The Indians, for this reason, know their destiny directly they are bit, and when they perceive it is mortal, apply no remedy, concluding all efforts in vain. From experiments made in Carolina by Captain Hall, and related in the Philosophical Transactions, it appears that a rattlesnake of about four feet long, being fastened to a stake in the ground, bit three dogs, the first of which died in less than a quarter of a minute; the second, which was bitten a short time afterward, in about two hours, in convulsions; and the third, which was bitten about half an hour afterward, showed the visible effects of the poison in about three hours, and died likewise.