NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



130 



handling poisonous snakes or any wild animal; one end of a 

 piece of cord is tied on to the end of a stick, the other end 

 is made to run loose through a turn in the cord ; the noose is 

 then slipped over the head of the snake, and thus he can lie 

 easily transferred from a box to a cage or other receptacle. Mr. 

 Baruett informs me that when a poisonous snake arrives at 

 the Zoological Gardens they transfer him to his new residence 

 by unfastening the lid of the box and leaving it on loose ; they 

 then put the box into the cage and with a long crooked iron rod 

 push off the lid and hook out the snake; when they wish to 

 remove the snake from the cage into the box, an apparatus like 

 Major Kogers's or even a common twitch, like that sometimes 

 used by farriers to hold a horse by the nose, is used. 



RATTLE OF EATTLESXAKE. There is a no more deadly snake 

 than the rattlesnake. In this horribly poisonous reptile we find 

 a most extraordinary apparatus to facib'tate its 

 getting up to its prey. This consists of liter- 

 ally a rattle on the end of its tail. 



Mr. Thomas Hughes, M.P., in January 1871, 

 was kind enough to give me a very fine specimen 

 of the rattle of a rattlesnake. It is about two 

 inches and a half long, and is composed of 

 nine joints. This piece of mechanism is one 

 of the most wonderful in the animal world. It 

 is composed of a horny material, very thin, and 

 is almost as transparent as the sheets of gela- 

 tine in which bon-bons are wrapped. It is 

 difficult to explain its ultimate structure in 

 words. The rattle before me is formed of nine 

 complete boxes, fitted one into the other in a 

 more ingenious way than any puzzle made by 

 human hands, even those of the Chinese ; these 

 boxes fit one into the other so that it is impos- 

 sible to get them apart without breaking them. 

 See figure. 



The rattle is rather more than half an inch across. The 

 snak6 does not carry it with its broad side to the ground, 

 but with one edge up and the other down ; when shaken 

 with the human hand the noise it makes is very like the 

 noise from a child's rattle ; but when the snake plays upon his 

 own instrument its sound is quick and sharp like shot when 

 dropped on a tin plate. I am told that when the snake rattles 

 in the open air the sound appears to come from anywhere but 

 the spot where the snake lies. There can be no doubt that 



RATTLE (IF HAITI I 

 SNAKi:. 



