THE RATTLE. 301 



towards the tip of the tail. ' Previous ' may mean in time, 

 or the age of the link, or it may mean position ; but a 

 knowledge of the development assists the comprehension 

 of such passages. 



In the above illustrations it will be seen that not only 

 do rattles differ in form in various species of snakes, but 

 that the links themselves differ in form in one and the same 

 rattle. Some of them are broader than others, some wider, 

 and some more compressed. In all the above drawings 

 I carefully and faithfully copied the originals. And in this 

 variability we can only refer again to claws, nails, horns, 

 feathers, etc., which are seen to differ in the same individual, 

 according to health, season, or accident. 



Where great numbers of rattlesnakes have been killed 

 in one locality, as, for instance, during the ' spring campaigns,' 

 their tails have presented on an average from fifteen to 

 twenty links each. Holbrooke ^ has seen one of twenty-one 

 links. A Crotalus at the London Reptilium had twenty-five 

 links at one time ; then ten of them got broken off, but still 

 a respectably-sized rattle remained. The longer the rattle, 

 the greater the risk of injury. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in 

 his wonderful story Elsie Vernier, states that a snake in the 

 locality where the Rocklands * Rattlesnake Den ' existed, 

 had forty joints in its rattle, and was supposed, after Indian 

 traditions, to have killed forty people. He tells us that the 

 inhabitants of those parts were remarkable for acute hearing 

 even in old age, from the practice of keeping their ears open 

 for the sound of the rattle whenever they were walking 

 through grass or in the woods. And whenever they heard 



1 Nojih American Hcrpetology, vol. iii. p. 15. By J. E. Holbrooke. 1842. 



