But when it comes to killing cattle, the lord of the jungle is not interested.  He kills but 100 in six years—­horses of hunters, no doubt —­but in the same six the tiger kills more than 84,000, the leopard 100,000, the bear 4,000, the wolf 70,000, the hyena more than 13,000, other wild beasts 27,000, and the snakes 19,000, a grand total of more than 300,000; an average of 50,000 head per year.

In response, the government kills, in the six years, a total of 3,201,232 wild beasts and snakes.  Ten for one.

It will be perceived that the snakes are not much interested in cattle; they kill only 3,000 odd per year.  The snakes are much more interested in man.  India swarms with deadly snakes.  At the head of the list is the cobra, the deadliest known to the world, a snake whose bite kills where the rattlesnake’s bite merely entertains.

In India, the annual man-killings by snakes are as uniform, as regular, and as forecastable as are the tiger-average and the suicide-average.  Anyone who bets that in India, in any three consecutive years the snakes will kill 49,500 persons, will win his bet; and anyone who bets that in India in any three consecutive years, the snakes will kill 53,500 persons, will lose his bet.  In India the snakes kill 17,000 people a year; they hardly ever fall short of it; they as seldom exceed it.  An insurance actuary could take the Indian census tables and the government’s snake tables and tell you within sixpence how much it would be worth to insure a man against death by snake-bite there.  If I had a dollar for every person killed per year in India, I would rather have it than any other property, as it is the only property in the world not subject to shrinkage.

I should like to have a royalty on the government-end of the snake business, too, and am in London now trying to get it; but when I get it it is not going to be as regular an income as the other will be if I get that; I have applied for it.  The snakes transact their end of the business in a more orderly and systematic way than the government transacts its end of it, because the snakes have had a long experience and know all about the traffic.  You can make sure that the government will never kill fewer than 110,000 snakes in a year, and that it will newer quite reach 300,000 too much room for oscillation; good speculative stock, to bear or bull, and buy and sell long and short, and all that kind of thing, but not eligible for investment like the other.  The man that speculates in the government’s snake crop wants to go carefully.  I would not advise a man to buy a single crop at all—­I mean a crop of futures for the possible wobble is something quite extraordinary.  If he can buy six future crops in a bunch, seller to deliver 1,500,000 altogether, that is another matter.  I do not know what snakes are worth now, but I know what they would be worth then, for the statistics show that the seller could not come within 427,000 of carrying out his contract.  However, I think that a person who speculates in snakes is a fool, anyway.  He always regrets it afterwards.