3 68 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Capturing a Diamond Rattler. 



villages would be in other states : 

 Camp Hammock, Hickory Ham- 

 mock and Jack Hammock are 

 familiar names in that region. 

 They serve as camping places 

 for men, and as shelters from 

 the noonday sun for cattle. 

 Some of them, when entered, are 

 veritable fairy-lands : from the 

 branches of the huge live oaks 

 are festooned great masses of 

 beautiful, gray, hanging moss, 

 while here and there is stationed 

 a stately palmetto, with its great 

 head of green leaves, each leaf- 

 nearly twice as tall as a man. 

 From the lower growth may pro- 

 ject the gaunt, bare branches of 

 a dead oak, on which a group 

 of turkey-buzzards and carrion 

 crows are likely to be seen. 



The much smaller ground 

 rattlers are also numerous on the 

 prairie, but, on account of their 

 small size, one to two feet instead 

 of six to eight, they are not feared 

 as are the diamond rattlers. 



The monotony of the prairie is 

 broken by an occasional clump of 

 trees, known as a " hammock " 

 (probably derived from "hum- 

 mock"). These hammocks are 

 sometimes composed merely of a 

 small group of palm trees, called 

 " cabbage palmettoes " from the 

 edible, cabbage-like core at the 

 tip; or they may cover several 

 acres and contain moss-hung oaks 

 and a dense undergrowth. The 

 hammocks serve as landmarks and 

 milestones for the traveler and 

 cowboy, and many of them ' are 

 named, just as streams, hills or 



k Gkoup of Carrion Crows. 



