572 SNAKES. 



rearing themselves high in their scuffle for the unhappy frog 

 of which both had equal hold. The keeper was obliged 

 to administer corporeal reproof, which caused one of them 

 to let go, when the other swallowed the frog almost 

 at one gulp, as you might swallow an oyster. Nor do they 

 invariably turn the frog round to swallow it head first. 

 This is done if the frog is likely to escape. These so-called 

 ' moccasins ' are of a very pugnacious disposition. One 

 of them once startled me by dashing at me through 

 the glass, with such violence that I thought the glass 

 would have been broken. I was doing nothing whatever 

 to alarm it, and I knew the snakes quite well. But in 

 that angry mood its aspect seemed so changed, that 

 I asked the keeper if that were a new snake and a 

 venomous one, which it certainly resembled at the 

 moment. I may here mention that Professor Brown Goode 

 (who presided over the 'American Science Convention on 

 Snakes') once caught a Tropidonotus fasciatiis in Florida, 

 which was so like the 'dreaded moccasin' {Ancistrodon 

 piscivorus), that not until he had examined the mouth and 

 found it was harmless could he identify it. These Tropi- 

 donoti have been known to take raw meat occasionally ; 

 so has the Xenodon, and so has a rattlesnake at the 

 Gardens. Indeed, of one of these the keeper said, ' It 

 will eat any dead thing ; ' and he found it convenient 

 sometimes to give it a rat or a guinea-pig which a 

 neighbouring snake had killed by poisoning, but not eaten. 

 The Crotalus in such cases imbibed some foreio-n venom 



o 



with his dinner. One Crotalus at the Gardens would eat 

 only rats, others prefer guinea-pigs. 



