Mr Audubon's Notes on the Hattlesnakc. SI 



Although several months a prey to the most excruciatiHg pains, 

 his bones softened by disease, and a thighbone fractured in con- 

 sequence of caries, he was never heard to utter a cry. The fate of 

 his works was the sole object of his solicitude. Death put a pe- 

 riod to his painful existence, on the 3d of August 1806. 



He directed by his will, that a garland of flowers, made up 

 from the fifty-eight families which he had estabhshed, should 

 be the only decoration of his coffin — a frail but affecting image 

 of the more lasting monument which he has himself created. 

 Some friend of science, we trust, will not be wanting, soon to 

 raise him another, by speedily rendering public all that his 

 immense collections still contain of new and useful informa- 

 tion. 



Notes on the Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) ; in u Letter ad- 

 dressed to Thomas Stuart Traill, M. D. S^c. By John 

 James Audubon, F. R. S. E. M. W. S. &c *. Communicat- 

 ed by the Author. 



JL HE power of fascination gratuitously ascribed to most 

 snakes by theoretical naturalists, has so long rivetted the atten- 

 tion of all persons incHned to think on the subject, but without 

 the means of judging for themselves, that the following fruits 

 of many years'* observation, in countries where snakes abound, 

 will not, I hope, though adverse to the supposed power of fasci- 

 nating, be looked upon as destitute of interest. 



Rattlesnakes in particular, appear to have acquired their 

 chief fame from this supposed charm. I shall, therefore, draw 

 your attention more directly to the habits of that species, and 

 begin by enumerating the many real and extraordinary facul- 

 ties bestowed upon it. These consist in swiftness ; in pow- 

 ers of extension and diminution of almost all their parts ; in 

 quickness of sight; in being amphibious; in possessing that 

 wonderful and extraordinary benefit of torpidity during win- 

 ter ; and long continued abstinence at other periods, without, 

 however, in the mean time losing the venomous faculty, the prin- 



• Read before the Werncrian Natural History Society, 24<th February 1827. 



