SNAKE LORE FOR FOREST LOVERS 



BY R. W. SHUFELDT 



(PHOTOGRAPHS BY 



T^ ROM a purely biological standpoint, snakes consti- 

 *- tute a wonderfully interesting group of animals, as 

 such, to study, while from an economic angle they de- 

 serve careful research and investigation. There are many 

 points in the natural history of them that are of interest 

 to lovers of forests. There are in the United States 



MODEL OF THE HEAD OF A VENOMOUS SNAKE 



Fig. I. This model is considerably larger than here shown, 

 it being a beautiful reproduction of the essential parts of the 

 head of a venomous snake. It is in the Museum of the Sur- 

 geon General's Office of the Army, at Washington, D. C. ; it 

 may be taken all apart, and thus used for lecture purposes. 

 The diagrams A and B in the lower left hand corner show 

 the patterns of the tooth-punctures found after the bite of a 

 venomous snake (A) and of a harmless one (B). 



considerably over a hundred different kinds of snakes 

 that have been described by naturalists. Their distribu- 

 tion differs widely, some having very wide ranges, while 

 others occur only in limited areas. Some are rare, others 

 are extremely abundant; some are very plain in colora- 

 tion, others are more or less brilliantly colored. In size 

 they vary greatly, running from a few inches in length to 

 six or seven feet. Our uneducated classes believe all 

 snakes to be venomous, whereas only a comparatively 

 few of them are so; and many are of value to man. 



THE AUTHOR) 



inasmuch as they feed upon a great variety of noxious, 

 insects that injure or destroy our crops. Of venomous 

 ones we have the Copperhead, the Water Moccasin, some 

 dozen different kinds of Rattlesnakes, the mildly venom- 

 ous Opisthoglyph snakes, and a couple of Coral or Har- 

 lequin snakes less than twenty, leaving over eighty 

 that are entirely harmless, apart from the few that oc- 

 casionally kill and devour poultry, or steal their eggs, 

 which rarely happens. 



Many chapters, in many parts of .the world, have been 

 published on the nature of snake-bite and its treatment; 

 but it is not the object of the present article to go into 

 that, further than to say that we now have an antitoxin 

 which has been proved of great value in saving life, 

 where a person has been bitten by a venomous reptile. 

 Our own surgeons are using it, and it has been in use in 

 India and in other countries for comparatively a long 

 time. Apart from this, it is an extremely important 

 point to know, when one has been bitten by a snake, 

 whether that particular snake was a venomous species or 

 otherwise. Such information is of the utmost service 



CHAIN OR COMMON KING SNAKE 



Fig. 2. This beautiful species is entirely hjirmless and very 

 gentle. It ranges from southern New Jersey to Florida. 

 Large specimens are about a yard in length. 



