HUMPHREY] NOTES ON THE BLACKSNAKE 387 



over a chair, when my sister said to me, " Look, there is a snake in 

 that box!" It was a box of books with only a few left in it. She 

 said it very calmly; I thought she was only joking, as she often 

 made that statement. When I looked lo and behold! there was a 

 blacksnake over three feet long. I was frightened and began to 

 scream, that frightened her so she began to scream. Mother heard 

 us and came home to see what was the matter. Then the hired 

 man came and killed the imwelcome visitor. Mother had been 

 annoyed with a mouse in her room for a long time, but after that 

 night she never heard it again. So we think it must have sf ent the 

 night in her room and caught the mouse, as blacksnakes are known 

 to be good mousers. To get in it had to climb a tree, come across 

 the porch roof and crawl in through open slats of a blind. 



The home of the blacksnake is generally in the edges of meadows, 

 which are fringed with brush, to which it can dart for safety. It 

 lives on the ground mostly although it climbs trees readily for food 

 such as birds' eggs of which it is very fond; this snake is solitary in 

 habits. If you find one, they say its mate is somewhere aroimd, 

 but otherwise I have never heard of two or more being together. 

 They have no regular home, except during the winter, when they 

 hibernate in holes in the ground usually singly. 



The blacksnake's head is very interesting, as so many of its 

 features are so different from those of other animals. Its ears are 

 not visible, and are very slightly developed, being very primitive. 

 There is no tympanic membrane developed, so the ability to hear 

 is very slight. But snakes are very sensitive to vibrations, which 

 probably takes the place of hearing. When we see the small beady 

 eyes of sanke, we find it hard to realize that the eyelid is fused 

 over the eye, and that the snake sees through a transparent portion 

 of it. The mouth is more accommodating than it is in the animals 

 with which we are familiar. The right and left halves of the lower 

 jaw are not firmly imited and the jaws are loosely attached to the 

 skull and are connected by an elastic ligam-ent. There is a groove 

 in the jaw so the tongue can.be thrust out even when the mouth is 

 closed; the tongue is long, slender and deeply notched. The teeth 

 are sharp and recurved, being adapted to force food into the throat. 

 In the case where we found the glass nest egg in the blacksnake, the 

 egg was larger than the head of the creature, and was certainly an 

 extraordinary mouthful. But the bones of the skull in the snake 

 are so arranged that the jaws are extremely mobile, which permits 



