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Handbook of Nature-Study 



THE MILK SNAKE OR SPOTTED ADDER 



Teacher's Story 



The grass divides as with a comb, a spotted shaft is seen, 

 And then it closes at your feet, and opens farther on. 



EMILY DICKINSON. 



I HIS is the snake which is said to milk cows, a most 

 absurd belief; it would not milk a cow if it could, and 

 it could not if it would . It has never yet been induced 

 to drink milk when in captivity ; and if it were very 

 thirsty, it could not drink more than two teaspoonfuls 

 of milk at most; thus in any case, its depredations 

 upon the milk supply need not be feared. Its object, 

 in frequenting milk houses and stables, is far other than 

 the milking of cows, for it is an inveterate hunter of 

 rats and mice and is thus of great benefit to the farmer. It is a constric- 

 tor, and squeezes its prey to death in its coils. 



The ground color of the milk snake is pale gray, but it is covered with 

 so many brown or dark gray saddle-shaped blotches, that they seem 

 rather to form the ground-color; the lower side is white, marked with 

 square black spots and blotches. The snake attains a length of about 

 three feet when fully grown. Although it is called commonly the spotted 

 adder, it does not belong to the adders at all, but to the family of the king 

 snakes. 



During July and August, the mother snake lays from seven to twenty 

 eggs; they are deposited in loose soil, in moist rubbish, in compost heaps, 

 etc. The egg is a symmetrical oval in shape and is about one and one- 

 eighth inches long by a half inch in diameter. The shell is soft and white, 

 like kid leather, and the egg resembles a puff ball. The young hatch 

 nearly two months after the eggs are laid, meanwhile the eggs have in- 

 creased in size so that the snakelings are nearly eight inches long when they 

 hatch. The saddle-shaped blotches on the young have much red in them. 

 The milk snake is not venomous; it will sometimes, in defence, try to 

 chew the hand of the captor, but the wounds it can inflict are very slight 

 and heal quickly. 



The milk snake or spotted adder. 



