ANIMAL ART STAMPS 



159 



Animal Art Stamps. 



The increasing popularity of poster 

 stamps and their collecting in various 

 wavs has suggested the reproduction 

 in that form of some of the remarkable 

 photographs of animals taken in the 

 New York Zoological Park during the 

 fifteen vears that institution has been 

 open to the public. 



The series issued at this time con- 



A SAMPLE OF ONE OF THE STAMPS. 



sists of 130 subjects, reproduced in 

 natural colors by the four-color process. 

 The stamps are 2}i x 3 inches in size 

 and are particularly clear and well exe- 

 cuted pictures. They are to be disposed 

 of in six sets of twenty stamps each, at 

 ten cents per set. The remaining ten 

 stamps of the series are mounted in a 

 thirty-two page album sold at fifteen 

 cents, which provides space for the en- 

 tire 130 stamps, making the cost of the 

 complete series and album seventy- 

 five cents. Carefully written captions 

 giving authentic infomation regarding 

 each animal represented appears in the 

 album under the space for each stamp. 

 This educational feature, in connection 

 with the fact that they are from actual 

 photographs, which include many rare 

 animals unknown to the average child, 

 makes the series the most worth while 

 picture stamps that have yet come to 

 our attention. 



If this isstie proves popular, others 

 will follow, as the collection of photo- 

 graphs available runs into the thous- 

 ands. 



A Mouse-eating Garter Snake. 



BY JOSEPH W. LIPPINCOTT. 



It is claimed by anthropologists that 

 different species of snakes have a re- 

 stricted diet from which they never vary 

 and that those which eat batrachians will 

 never eat warm-blooded animals and vice 

 versa ; nevertheless I once saw a garter 

 snake sw'allowing a meadow mouse re- 

 gardless of the fact that this species of 

 snake comes under the former head and 

 feeds regularly on toads, frogs, small 

 fish and earthworms. 



It happened that, when walking along 

 the sea cHft's on Conanicut Island, Nar- 

 ragansett Bay, I saw^ quite a distance 

 away a queer head rear itself above the 

 thick meadow grass, wag oddly once or 

 twice on its thin neck and then drop 

 again below the grass tops. It proved 

 to be a stout three-foot garter snake 

 with the biggest, fattest, short-tailed 

 meadow mouse I ever saw stuck in his 

 jaws in such a way that it seemed a pro- 

 longation of the snake's head. The hind 

 quarters and the tail were down the 

 throat and when the snake reared up in 

 his earnest yet comical endeavors to 

 climb over the grass in the directon of a 

 briar patch, the mouse seemed to be 

 calmly sitting on a pedestal. 



The grass was too thick 10 push 

 through with the cumbersome load so the 

 snake rose on his tail as high as he could 

 and then toppled over, or rather fiung 

 himself, towards his goal. His head 



would land in the grass about a foot 

 away from where the tail had been, the 

 tail being drawm after the head and 

 coiled again preparator_\- to repeating the 

 strange performance. 



I evidently hastened the reptile in his 

 retreat for he soon made much quicker 

 motions and scarcely ever rested between 

 jumps. The closer I watched the more 

 ner^-ous he grew until without any warn- 

 ing- he disgorged the half swallow^ed 

 mouse and then beat a very hasty retreat 

 to the briar patch, finding no difficulty 

 in threading his way through the grass 

 ^low that the bulky prey was discarded. 

 There w^as not the least doubt about his 

 being a common garter snake. 



Tests at the IMaryland Agricultural 

 College show that 700 yards is the out- 

 side limit to which a fly commonly 

 roves from the point where it is hatch- 

 ed. 



New measurement by a French as- 

 tronomer shows that the sun's corona 

 is apparently spinning faster than the 

 general mass. About two miles a 

 second is the probable velocity. 



