376 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
hands. Escape from the pursuit of the Black Snake is said to be 
out of the question to any one not endowed with extraordinary 
bicrural provision for effecting an expeditious retreat in time of 
danger, the velocity of this reptile being such as to have acquired 
for it the name of * Racer" in several of the northern states, in 
many of which it abounds. Dr. Holbrook discredits the popular 
belief that this Snake throws down the person it overtakes by 
twining round his legs, and rejects, from his own observation, the 
assertion of its killing its prey by constriction ; from one or both 
of which fallacious opinions the name of constrictor was given by 
Linnæus, probably on the relation of Kalm, whose account of the 
Black Snake, in his Travels, is very full and entertaining. The 
pair we fell in with seemed to be between five and six feet in 
length, and about the size of the fore-arm in their thickest part, 
or perhaps scarcely quite so stout. 
At Basto we were hospitably received by —- Richards, Esq., 
then about to establish a manufactory of glass at that place, which 
abounds in a sand little, if at all, inferior in whiteness to our Alum 
Bay sand, so much in request for the finest plate glass. I am told 
that Batsto signifies, in the language of the native Indians, a 
bathing place, which, if correct, would, with a little alteration in 
the spelling to Badstow, convey the same meaning in pure Anglo- 
Saxon. Pursuing the analogy farther, should such exist, might 
add much weight to the tradition that this part of America was 
colonized, or at least visited in the middle ages by adventurers 
from the north of Europe, amongst whom we may reasonably 
suppose the Anglo-Saxons to have followed in the wake of the 
Scandinavians, the earliest recorded discoverers of that continent, 
and to have left traces as well of their language as of their skill in 
the arts of civilized life, evinced, as is alleged, by the remains of 
pottery, and of well-formed bricks, which are found at considerable 
depths below the surface, and ascribed by the Indians themselves 
to an epoch long anterior to the fifteenth century, or that of 
Columbus and Cabot.* The place is very small and though 
* See Kalm’s Travels into North America, vol. ii. p. 31 (English Translation). 
