756 13. COLUBRID 
small streams are numerous. It usually is very gentle, but 
sometimes fights its captor most fiercely, rarely, however, 
being able to draw blood with its small teeth. I have twice 
found it swallowing the contents of quails’ nests, and once 
observed one crawling along the ground and looking up 
into the bushes for nests of small birds. Several times while 
I watched, its quick eyes detected nests three or four feet 
above it, but although the snake immediately climbed up 
to these, it did not obtain a meal, for the nests which it 
examined had been abandoned by their builders or robbed 
by some earlier comer. 
While I was watching a man spade up a small plot of 
ground, he killed two gophers (Thomomys) and threw 
them a few feet away. A few minutes later a snake of this 
species appeared, went directly to the spot where the gophers 
lay side by side, and swallowed first the adult and then the 
half grown one. It took no notice of our presence, and 
after completing its hearty meal disappeared in the direc- 
tion whence it had come. 
Dr. Merriam notes (N. Amer. Fauna No. 7) that several 
were secured in dense thickets of Atriplex torreyi at Overton, 
Nevada. About dark they began to emerge from these re- 
treats, making a great noise in crawling over the dry leaves, 
and were soon found in the open. 
A specimen preserved in the collection of the University 
of California, had partially swallowed a rattlesnake about 
two feet long. Plate 82 shows a Boyle’s Milk Snake eating 
a Coast Gopher Snake which it had just killed. 
