FIELD NATURALISTS' CLUB. 277 



they will eat nothing else. The tree boas seem to live chiefly on rats 

 but no doubt they will also take birds. There is a very prevalent 

 belief in Trinidad that the Cribo {Coluber corais) is an inveterate 

 snake killer. I have found it to be so to my cost. Sometime 

 ago I bought a couple and a friend brought me a third. I put 

 them in a large box along with some tree boas {Epicrates 

 cenchris). One night one of the boas gave birth to a dozen or 

 so little ones. In the morning I found the Cribos busily 

 engaged in gobbling up the newly born boas. The little things, 

 however, made terrific struggled and gave their cannibal cousins 

 no end of trouble. You will remember the Boa which swallowed 

 his mate at the London Zoological Gardens. A similar occurrence 

 took place only last week. But the actors were small serpents of 

 only twenty inches. A small mouse had been place in the box 

 with two of these same little Epicrates. They killed it between 

 them, but, by some accident, one of them caught the other and 

 though they were of equal length, he had succeeded in completely 

 swallowing his brother, only an inch of tail being visible and 

 that was rapidly disappearing. I pulled the swallowed one out 

 but he was quite dead. The cribos I referred to just now are 

 very fond of frogs and the other day when I went into my 

 s lake room I saw what looked like an enormous two tailed snake. 

 One had swallowed half of the other. The swallowed one had 

 managed to swell himself out so much that he was apparently 

 as thick as his cannibal chum. I got them apart and then I 

 saw that the half swallowed one had a frog in his mouth on 

 which he had retained his hold even in the stomach of his 

 adversary and which he quickly devoured as he climbed up to his 

 shelf, afterwards flicking his tongue in and out in a fashion 

 which suggested the probability of a serpentine chuckle at how 

 he had scored several points over his friend. I have been 

 accustomed in cases of emergency to make various snakes chum 

 in with each other and through thoughtlessness this has cost me 

 dear. The cribo's cage is a very convenient one and con- 

 sequently any snake just acquired is usually put into it. My 

 first misfortune was to lose a North American Mocassin 

 (Tropidonotu8 fasciatus) valuable because he was a good show 

 snake and not easily replaced. His rough carinated scales 

 however disagreed with the cribo who disgorged him when half 

 digested. Not so however with a lovely yellow machete 

 {Herpetodryat carinatus) which was swallowed while I left the 

 room to fetch the money I had given for him. I felt inclined 

 to kill that worthless cribo after that. On Sunday night he 

 p'ayed me the same trick again swallowing a beautiful little tree 

 bja given me by Mr. Caracciolo two years ago, and which I had 

 carefully reared until it had attained quite a respectable size. 

 One of the most difficult Trinidad snakes to feed is the Tigre and 



