408 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



Variation. — Tlie supposed species, or subspecies, A. pugnax, was 

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

 labials in spe(;iinensfroni Texas, the second being crowded up from the 

 commissure by the first 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 foundation for a division. 



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

 have no significance. 



In the young specimens tlie colors are much lighter and the pattern 

 better defined than in the adults. 



Geographical <lLstribuiio)i. — 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 harlequin snake, Elaps 

 fulvius, 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 np the Mississippi River and some 

 of its S(mthern tributaries. 



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

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

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

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

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

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

 marshy ])laces. 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 far 

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

 Kohu 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 Mr. Robert Ridgway assures 

 me 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 Cojje regards it as still abundant, but in the 

 western, more arid ])ortion of the State it does not seem to go farther 

 up than about the thirtieth i)arailel, thougli on the coast it is cpiite 

 l^lentiful. 



Habits. — Unlike the other Pit Yipers inhabiting the United States, 

 the Water Moccasin, as the name implies, is distinctively a water snake. 

 Holbrook, who had plenty of opportunity to observe its habits, writes 

 that it is found about damp swampy places, or in water — far from 

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



