Even within the same family there are wide differences. In
the jararaca an extraordinary quantity of yellow venom is spurted from
the long poison-fangs. This poison is secreted in large glands which,
among vipers, give the head its peculiar ace-of-spades shape. The
rattlesnake yields a much smaller quantity of white venom, but,
quantity for quantity, this white venom is more deadly. It is the
great quantity of venom injected by the long fangs of the jararaca,
the bushmaster, and their fellows that renders their bite so generally
fatal. Moreover, even between these two allied genera of pit-vipers,
the differences in the action of the poison are sufficiently marked to
be easily recognizable, and to render the most effective anti-venomous
serum for each slightly different from the other. However, they are
near enough alike to make this difference, in practice, of
comparatively small consequence. In practice the same serum can be
used to neutralize the effect of either, and, as will be seen later
on, the snake that is immune to one kind of venom is also immune to
the other.
But the effect of the venom of the poisonous colubrine snakes is
totally different from, although to the full as deadly as, the effect
of the poison of the rattlesnake or jararaca.
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