ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE OF CHILDREN. 369 



a reputed final cure for toothache is to bite into a living black- 

 snake. An old saying 



" Break your first brake, 

 Kill your first snake, 

 And you'll conquer all your enemies " 



is often recalled by the first snake one meets in the spring, or at sight 

 of the earliest fern. I find few children can be persuaded that our 

 common snakes are not " poisonous." And here and there throughout 

 New England it is believed that the common water-adder (Tropido- 

 notus sipedon) is most venomous, and that it carries " a sting in its 

 tail " ! This fictitious appendage of the adder suggests the remark- 

 able hold that the belief in " hoop-snakes," and their extraordinary 

 gymnastics, has obtained in many of the remoter and more heavily 

 wooded portions of the country. This imaginary creature is said to 

 have a sting in its tail, which, when about to make an attack, it takes 

 in its mouth, so as to form a hoop, then it rolls along (by preference 

 down a steep hill-side) toward the intended victim, whom it strikes in 

 passing with its sting. I can find no foundation for belief in any such 

 animal. 



Some dozen years ago, while I was connected with a high-school in 

 Northwestern Missouri, my pupils tried hard to convince me that 

 " jointed snakes " were not uncommon there. I was told that, if one 

 of these snakes were struck a sharp blow, it would quickly break into 

 many pieces, which, being very brittle, were apt to fly about in differ- 

 ent directions, so that it w T ould be difficult to find all of them ; but if 

 left alone, after the danger was past, these scattered parts or " joints " 

 would " crawl together," fall into order, and creep off as good as new. 

 There was so much testimony concerning this marvelous reptile, that I 

 was tempted to think there was some basis of truth for the belief in 

 its existence, but, after minute inquiry, I concluded that the whole 

 story had probably grown out of the fact that there is a certain lizard 

 ( Opheosaurus ventralis), popularly known as the " glass-snake," whose 

 tail is so fragile that it breaks easily when struck. I find that, at least 

 in one village in Eastern Massachusetts, the boys insist that, if you cut 

 off the head of a certain kind of snake, it will grow on to the body 

 again and the snake will live. 



Another most absurd notion whose connection with the subject of 

 snakes is, however, wholly nominal, is that horse-hairs, if allowed to 

 remain in a pond or puddle of water, will become living creatures 

 " turn into snakes " is the technical term among boys, I believe, for 

 the supposed metamorphosis. It would seem that, by way of teachers 

 long before this, Professor Agassiz's article on this subject might have 

 worked its way even into very provincial districts. Nevertheless, only 

 last year, a young man in a thriving Western college earnestly sup- 

 ported the theory, and tried hard to convince his professor in zoology 



TOL. XXIX. 24 



