153 



and not infrequently whole days are spent in sleeping. This is almost 

 universally the case during very cloudy weather. Its food has consisted 

 of raw eggs, of which three or four are consumed in a week. Sometimes it 

 will eat an egg each day for two or three days, and then will touch noth- 

 ing for nearly a week. The method of taking this food is by suction, as- 

 sisted by sliding back and forth its flat, forked tongue. When the eggs 

 were given without first breaking the parts, it was very difficult to swallow, 

 the food would be forced out through the nostrils and some time would be 

 spent holding the head elevated so that gravity might force it down the 

 throat. 



Other foods were offered, but in no case were they touched. 



Although its native home is in that arid region where rain seldom falls 

 in abundance, it showed a special fondness for water. It would frequently 

 lie in a pan of water during the whole day. At times, when the appetite 

 made no demands for the food, he would frequently crawl into the pan, as 

 if he preferred to take it by absorption. 



In breathing, there seemed to be a full expansion of the lungs every 50 

 or GO seconds. The air is then expelled, as it seems, in a kind of pulsations. 

 These pulsations are seen on each side of the neck and vary from fifteen to 

 thirty per minute. But during the torpid state, which began about the 

 middle of October, there appears to be no full expansion of the chest, but 

 respiration is conducted wholly by this pulsation. If, however, the animal 

 be disturbed, the air is immediately forced out of the lungs with a sound 

 very much resembling a deep sigh. 



The moulting began about the last of July or the first of August, and was 

 not completed until the last of September. The skin was removed in pieces, 

 beginning about the middle of the body. 



In regard to the nature of the vermin and the fatality of the bite there 

 is little to ofter that is new. The result of experiments, however, seem to 

 cast some doubt upon the idea formerly held that the action of the poison 

 was very rapid. 



The first animal that was bitten was the common tiger salamander. In 

 this case there was no more deleterious efl^'ect than would have occurred 

 from the bite of any other animal. The same thing was true with the next, 

 which was a common toad. In both of these cases, after the bite, the helo- 

 derma frothed considerably at the mouth and refused to make the second 

 bite. 



The next animal bitten was a rat. After the rat had been bitten two or 



