246 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



If the wound made by the bite of a snake has the shape 

 of a horseshoe, there is no danger that it was poisonous ; 

 but if the wound consists only of one or two separate 

 l^unetures, the snake might have been a poisonous one, 

 and, therefore, tlie wound should be attended to.^ 



The food of snakes consists of living animals, generally 

 swallowed alive; only rarely do they eat a dead animal 

 that thej^ have not previously killed. Snakes that are 

 kept in captivity seldom eat, but if they are provided with 

 drinking water may hold out a whole year. Young snakes 

 eat all kinds of living insects. 



The farmers should not kill every snake they come 

 across, as they generally do, because they are their best 

 help in destroying field mice and wood mice, doing better 

 work than a cat. I will here give only one instance. At 

 a certain place where I formerly caught a great many 

 snakes with only an occasional mouse nest under a rock, 

 I now find, after the removal of most of the snakes, many 

 mice nests, due undoubtedly to the absence of the snakes. 



The teeth of the snakes are set backwards and merely 

 serve as an organ of prehension, and the fangs, when 

 present, as in our poisonous snakes, are used only in 

 striking. 



Some snakes are known to lay eggs which after a period 

 produce young. Other snakes are known to retain the 

 eggs within the body until the young have attained suffi- 

 cient size and strength to care for themselves after birth. 

 Still other species are supposed sometimes to lay eggs, 

 at other times to bring forth living young, or to produce 

 some eggs and some living young at the same time. 

 There are, indeed, oviparous snakes and snakes which 

 are ovoviviparous, and there is a conspicuous difference 



* In the most southern part of the state may occasionally be found a 

 snake, Elaps fulvius, the Bead Snake, which will produce the same 

 kind of a wound, but this snake is so easily recognized by its splen- 

 did coloring that the person bitten will know at once and take the 

 necessary steps. 



