198 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In thousands of rancho cabins a pet serpent of the genus coluber may 

 be seen gliding noiselessly along the rafters, or slip through the 

 crack of a floor plank to reach the penetralia of the basement, where 

 the death shriek of rodents soon after announces the result of its 

 activity. Aristocratic Creoles relegate it to their stables, but the 

 tenants of numerous backwood casuchas furnish it a cotton-stuifed 

 bed box, and reward its services with a weekly dish of milk. There 

 are several species of large river serpents, and one true boa, the Cuban 

 matapollos, or chicken-killer, that attains a length of eighteen feet, 

 and has been known to use its supernumerary coils for the purj^ose 

 of cracking the ribs of a hound flying to the assistance of the barn- 

 yard rooster. 



In addition to the above-mentioned jungle tortoise there are 

 several land turtles of the genus chlemmys, and thousands of eheli- 



Flying Fish {Exocmtus volitam):, Flying Gurnard or Flying Eobin {Cephalacanthus 

 Dolitans). (From Baskett's Story of the Fishes.) 



donians arc annually caught on Samana Ba}^, southern Porto Rico, 

 St. Vincent, the Isle of Pines, and the north coast of Matanzas, Cuba. 

 Those of Santiago Bay have gradually been exterminated, but a 

 large number of West Indian fishing waters are practically inex- 

 haustible. A specialist like Agassiz might haul nondescripts from 

 scores of Haytian coast rivers, and the angle fishers of the Cuban 

 sierra brooks can hook an equally interesting reproduction of an 

 Appalachian species. 



" Some of our cdmpanions had to eke out a haul with crawfish," 

 says the traveler Esterman, " but our own string of sundries included 

 a puzzle for naturalists. We had caught some twenty brook trout, 

 absolutely indistinguishable from the species found in the head waters 

 of the Tennessee River. Where did they come from? Had they 

 crossed the Gulf of Mexico and ascended the rapids of half a hundred 

 rivers, or had Nature copied her own handiwork in such details as 



