398 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



Of all our native snakes, the habits of none are better known than 

 those of our pit vipers, yet there are many points in (lis])ute which it will 

 require time and patience ami good luck to settle. Other questions 

 which we have considered to be answered must be discussed over again, 

 because later observations seem to cast doubt upon the conclusions 

 long since arrived at. Thus, we have believed it an undoubted fact 

 that all the Pit Vi[)ers bring forth their young aliv'e. Gradually the 

 conclusion had been gained that all of them in this respect are essen- 

 tially alike, and that the progeny is comparatively limited in number. 

 The constantly repeated stories of Copperheads having had innumerable 

 young ones have been shown to rest on confusion with the young of the 

 spreading adder. The average number of young Pit Vipers born by 

 species occurring in our country seems to be S or 9. exceptionally as high 

 as 14, while as many as 24 have been authentically recorded for some 

 exotic forms. But now we read in the very latest edition of Brehm's 

 "Thierleben" (Vol. vii, 1892, p. 444) that credence is given to the account 

 of Geyer that he has observed a nest of about 40 Rattlesnake eggs in 

 the very act of hatching! 'Sow it is quite true that there are reptiles 

 in which the time of the hatching and that of the expulsion of the eggs 

 are so close that sometimes the young ones are hatched within the body 

 of the mother, and thus born alive, but with these snakes the case is 

 somewhat different, for the egg covering is so thin that it is most 

 improbable that the eggs are ever expelled before the young have 

 broken through. 



In close connection with the above we are (confronted by a not unfa- 

 miliar question : " l>o the snakes swallow their young for the sake of pro- 

 tection'?" Concerning, as it does, the snakes in general and not the 

 pit vipers in special, except in so far as they are rejiorted to be among 

 the ones observed to do this very thing, I should have left this theme 

 at the present occasion with a reference to Dr. G. Brown Goode's admi- 

 rable summary of all the evidence u}) to 1873, * as it would carry us too 

 far to present all that has been written about the subject since then in 

 this connection, but from the many unpublished letters in my possession 

 bearing upon tlie question, and which I have reserved for a later sep- 

 arate publication, 1 wish to j^rint the following extracts from one 

 by the late Dr. William C. Avery, ot Greensboro, Ala., because they 

 jjointedly expose the inconsistency of some of those who deny the actu- 

 ality of an occurrence testitied to by numerous and competent witnesses, 

 simply because it seems improbable and because they have not seen it 

 themselves. Apropos of an account in a previous letter of how he 

 himself once saw a young water moccasin run down its mother's throat, 

 Dr. Avery wrote as follows: 



My reason for inoutiouing in my last letter the fiict that I had seen a snake take 

 her young into lier throat was that it had bi^en denied by some writers. In a work 



*0n the question "Do Snakes Swallow their Young?" Proc. Amey. Assoc, 

 Advanc. Science, Portland Meeting, 1873 (pp. 176-185). 



