PART IV 



THE SNAKES; ORDER OPHIDIA 



It is with the present great Order of Scaled Reptiles 

 that the writer begs leave to escort the reader within the 

 portals of his favorite study. That many will encounter 

 this subject with aversion is fully believed; but it is the 

 writer's hope, ere this book is finally closed, a persistently 

 reigning and unjust prejudice may be completely shat- 

 tered by the explosion of a long train of erroneous 

 theories; when snakes have been described as they truly 

 are, and the clean, graceful and wonderful phases of 

 their varied structure have been faithfully portrayed by 

 the camera. 



It is with a thoroughly sympathetic interest the writer 

 compiles Part IV of this book. While his studies have 

 involved reptiles generally, his favorite creature in Na- 

 ture has, from early boyhood days, been The Serpent. 

 His home has always been the headquarters of an ex- 

 tensive collection of snakes large and small, innocuous 

 and venomous. It was individual care, among restricted 

 numbers of the various species, that elicited strange hab- 

 its; and these, when fully comprehended, have been of 

 the greatest value to the writer in successfully maintain- 

 ing the many hundreds of serpents in the splendid Rep- 

 tile House of the New York Zoological Park. 



As compared with the closely allied Order, the Lacer- 

 tilia, the snakes exhibit even a greater variability of 

 form. Take, for instance, a twenty-five foot python 

 weighing three hundred pounds and compare this with 



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