70 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE 



rare at this day and rapidly becoming extinct. Fourth, the mi- 

 grants, rapidly joining the class of rare birds ; these include also 

 about twenty varieties. 



Of birds which were considered common twenty-five years ago 

 Mr. William Little gave a list of eighty-five, and even in the 

 brief period which has since elapsed not less than one-third of 

 the whole number may now be classed as rare. In another place 

 we intend further comment upon the threatened extinction of 

 our songbirds. 



Under the head of reptiles we find to-day, although some are 

 very rare, the following : The black or snapping turtle, and the 

 mud turtle or musk tortoise ; also the painted, spotted, box and 

 Blanding's box tortoise and the wood terrapin. 



Of snakes wq have the common striped snake, the green or 

 grass snake, ribbon snake, house or milk adder, field and swamp 

 adder, the black snake, the red or brown wood snake, the ring- 

 necked snake, black water snake and rattlesnake. Ring-necked, 

 ribbon, and rattlesnake are now rare. The latter, the only pois- 

 onous variety, was formerly common here. The writer knows 

 of but one authenticated case of a rattler being killed within the 

 city limits in the last twenty-five years, but it is said they still 

 haunt the neighborhood of "The Pinnacle" and other rocky 

 ledges in Hooksett. Until quite recently it was claimed they 

 were killed there at the rate of about one per annum. Notwith- 

 standing a wide spread, popular belief to the contrary, not one 

 of the other snakes mentioned is poisonous. The black water- 

 snake, still common in the Massabesic and other neighborhood 

 ponds, and the cause of so much unreasoning terror, is entirely 

 harmless, its bite being no more fatal than that of a pickerel, and 

 finally they never bite anything but frogs. They can be easily 

 caught by tying a live frog to a string and sinking it in the bay 

 or inlet which they haunt ; said snake having swallowed the frog 

 aforesaid may be pulled ashore, whereupon he will at once dis- 

 gorge his prey. The released frog, like Jonah of old, sometimes 



