84 CROTALUS DURISSUS. 



enough; and he relates stories of their entering dwelling houses, and of one having 

 even shared his bed, undiscovered; but his accounts are so strange at the present 

 day, that we must suppose him deceived by the servants of the house where they 

 are said to have occurred in February, a season at which the rattlesnake is never 

 abroad. At present it is rarely met with, keeping far from all settlements, where 

 its greatest enemy, the hog, is to be found. Even sportsmen are seldom under 

 any apprehension on their account; yet I have more than once known dogs killed 

 by them when the hunters have penetrated into woods at a distance from settle- 

 ments. 



Much has been said lately about the rattlesnake's power of climbing trees. To 

 me his organization* seems very ill adapted to this; the tail in those snakes that 

 climb with great facility is long and slender, and may at times be used as a 

 prehensile instrument; while that of the rattlesnake is short and thick; the rattles, 

 too, which are easily broken, would form an awkward appendage in climbing. 



Geographical Distribution. The Crotalus durissus has the widest range of 

 all our rattlesnakes, being found in nearly all parts of the United States. Kalm 

 saw it in lat. 45° near Lake Champlain, and I have seen specimens from the 

 borders of the Gulf of Mexico, and as far west as the Red river; and Dr. Pickering 

 informs me that Say met with it in lat. 40° on the Mississippi. 



General Remarks. There can be no doubt that this animal was first made 

 known to naturalists by Catesby, whose plate of it is too good to be mistaken. 

 Kalm, the celebrated Swedish traveller, next observed it in the northern states of 

 the Union, and gave an accurate scientific description of it, from which Linnaeus 

 extracted the characters that distinguish the Crotalus durissus of the tenth edition 

 of his Systema Naturae. 



* A full account of the curious organization of the rattlesnake, of its poison, and of its effect 

 on animals, will be given in the anatomical part of this work. 



