Published mont ly by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA ■ Sound Beach, Connecticut, 



Subscript! n, $1.00 a year Single copy, 10 cents 



Second-Class Matter June 12. 1909. at Sound Beach Post Office, under Act of M arch 3. 1897 



APRIL, 1917 



Number 11 



Venomous Snakes of the Eastern Unit- 

 ed States. 



BY GAYNE T. K. NORTON, NEW YORK CITY. 



■ Several things have transpired re- 

 •cently that prompt the writing of this 

 •paper on the venomous snakes of the 

 ■eastern United States. The wa-iter had 

 a thrilling experience — I'll not dignify 

 it by calling it an escape — with a cop- 

 ])erhead in New York City. A friend, 

 while exhibiting a copperhead, was 

 poisoned by a drop of the venom com- 

 ing in contact with an unknown scratch 

 so that the loss of his arm was narrow- 

 ly escaped and his life saved only by 

 prompt action. A recent article in a 

 magazine belittling the danger of the 

 moccasin, and the tragic experience of 

 a keeper in the New York Zoological 

 Societ3^'s Reptile House, and other in- 

 cidents, are my excuse for writing. Mr. 

 R. L. Ditmars, Reptile Curator of the 

 New York Zoological Societv and the 

 Rockefeller Institute savs : "It is not 

 generally appreciated that inhabiting 

 the United States are some of the most 

 deadly know^n species of snakes, and 

 these fairly teem in some parts of the 

 country. Even in the East — in the im- 

 mediate vicinity of w^ell-known summer 

 resorts, wathin city and town limits — 

 poisonous snakes are abundant. It is 

 well — nay imperative — for all who visit 

 the country to know how to distinguish 



these from the man)- harmless and real- 

 ly beneficial reptiles." 



Of the one hundred and eleven spec- 

 ies of snakes found in this country, 

 seventeen are poisonous. There is 

 hardly a portion of the country that is 

 not inhabited by poisonous snakes. The 

 majority are found in southern lati- 

 tudes, thotigh the few northern species 

 are so abundant that venomous snakes 

 are more common in some sections oi^ 

 the East than in the South. 



The two species of Elapine snakes, 

 the common coral (Elaps fulvhis,) and 

 the Sonoran coral {Elaps eiiryxanthus), 

 need hardly be mentioned as their hab- 

 itat is restricted to the South. A few 

 words will suffice for the rattlesnakes, 

 because all species are readily distin- 

 guished by the rattle. The timber rat- 

 tlesnake {Crotalus horridiis) is the only 

 one found in the East though the Mas- 

 sasauga {Sistrtirus catenatus) and the 

 pigmy rattlesnake {Shtrurus mV.'uiriu^\ 

 are found in the central and southeast- 

 ern regions, the other ten species ap- 

 pearing only in the South. This leaves 

 but two species of the Crotaline snakes 

 to be described : the copperhead (Jncis- 

 trodon contortrix) of the East, and the 

 water moccasin {Ancistrondon piscivor- 

 its) of the Southeast. 



These two species belong, with the 

 rattlesnakes, to the sub-family of Pit 



Copyright 1917 by The lAgassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Conn. 



