408 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893, 



Variation.— The supposed species, or subspecies, .1. pufina.r^ was 

 based ui)on an alleged different arrangement of the anterior supra- 

 labials in specimens from Texas, the second being crowded up from the 

 commissure by the iirst and third. Later investigations of much addi- 

 tional material have shown that the character is very variable and 

 entirely too unstable to serve as a tbundation for a division. 



The number of divided urosteges is also highly variable and seems to 

 have no significance. 



In the young s])ecimens the colors are much ligliter and the pattern 

 better defined than in the adults. 



Geographical (listrilnition.— In the main, the Water Moccasin, or the 

 Cotton-Mouth, as it is also often called from the whiteness of its mouth, 

 has the same range in the United States as the harleciuin snake, Ula2)s 

 fulri>(.s, extending as it does from North Carolina along the coast to 

 the Mexican boundary, including the entire peninsula of Florida, It 

 is also found a considerable distance up the Mississippi Kiver and some 

 of its southern tributaries. 



In North Carolina it is found in several localities. We have speci- 

 mens from Wilmington and New Berne, and Messrs. Brindey, of 

 Raleigh, inform me that in the summer of 1891 one specimen over 3 

 feet long was taken on Neuse Kiver, 1 mile above Milburne, some 6 

 or 8 miles east of Kaleigh. According to Coues and Yarrow, it is very 

 numerous in woods of Bogue banks on the mainhuul near wet and 

 marshy jdaces. Holbrook locates its northern limit at Pedee River. 

 In the coast regions of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Missis- 

 sippi it is very numerous, as well as over the whole of Florida as tiir 

 as Key West, The same may be said of Louisiana, and Dr. Gustave 

 Ivohn informs me that the moccasin, or the Congo serpent, as it is 

 called by the Creoles, is common even within the limits of the city of 

 New Orleans, Along the Mississippi River it ascends into southern 

 Missouri, Illinois, and Western Kentucky, In Illinois it occurs along 

 the Wabash River at Mount Carmel, and Mv. Robert Ridgway assures 

 nie that trustworthy witnesses have told him of its former occurrence 

 as far as Yincennes, in Indiana. On the west side it ascends the 

 Arkansas River the entire breadth of the State of Arkansas, and 

 seems to reach as far up as the boundary of Oklahoma Territory at 

 least. In eastern Texas it follows the rivers into the interior even as 

 far up as Dallas, where Cope regards it as still abuiulant, but in the 

 western, more arid portion of the State it does not seem to go fsirther 

 up than about the thirtieth parallel, though on the coast it is quite 

 plentiful, 



HahiU.—rnlike the other Pit Yipers inhabiting the United States, 

 the AYater IMoccasin, as the name implies, is distinctively a water snake. 

 Holbrook, wlio had ])lenty of opportunity to observe its habits, writes 

 that it is found about dam]> swampy places, or in water— far from 

 which it is never observed. In summer, numbers of these serpents are 



