THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 295 



combining to create a new and altogether unique form of energy. 

 I stood between the tracks and watched his advance; strong enough, 

 it looked, to overthrow quite a massive obstacle or thrust it aside, 

 yet gently gliding about a blade of grass without bending it, or 

 flowing like oil round the sides of a stone. Not the slightest 

 notice of me did he take, but lay out along the sand within a foot 

 of the rail and basked in the sun. I stepped over to that side 

 of the track and looked down at him; first his head and neck, 

 and then the markings on his back. There was something strange 

 to my eye in the appearance of this garter snake; the broad zig- 

 zag bands of yellow seemed unfamiliar; the colour itself was not 

 the waspy straw yellow I was expecting, but darker in part, almost 

 red-ocre, like a British hornet; I glanced at the tail: one, two, 

 three, four, five naked joints; it was my first rattlesnake. Just 

 then the rumble of an approaching car forced me to step from the 

 tracks; I had no desire to be marooned for even a moment alone 

 with a rattler on a narrow strip of cliff-edge, so I chose the other 

 side of the right-of-way. As soon as the coast was clear, I returned 

 to my scrutiny; the snake had not moved, though the car hlid 

 lumbered by within a foot of him, out-rattling a thousand of his 

 kind; but he was startled, probably by the vibration of the ground, 

 and almost immediately slid back into the bushes and so (doubtless) 

 down to the ravine. The keepers at the Glen had not seen one 

 all the season and showed surprise, if not annoyance, that I had 

 not killed this fellow. Snakes are none of them aggressive, but 

 the rattler is, I believe, more than ordinarily sluggish; unless 

 cornered or accidentally stepped upon or jostled, he is perfectly 

 harmless, and in cold weather can be picked up and handled 

 with impunity. 



In the rich herbage beside one of the paths that led to the 

 flight of wooden stairs I noticed numbers of little chrysomelians 

 feeding, at least three species, two of them black with four yellow 

 or reddish spots on the elytra (2 basal and 2 apical), one of the 

 beetles proving Bassaretis and the other Cryptocephalns\ the third 

 species was of a uniform dark-grey and quadrate in outline, ap- 

 parently Pachybrachys. 



I had now reached the Glen itself, and proceeded to hobnob 

 for an hour or two with some old cronies among the ferns. It ap- 



