28 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



them again in the proper order and moves rapidly 

 away ; the black snake " eight feet long and as thick 

 as your wrist" ; the spreading viper " the most poison- 

 ous of all snakes," and of which one writer has said : 

 "When approached it becomes flat, appears of differ- 

 ent colors, and opens its mouth hissing. Great care 

 must be taken not to enter the atmosphere which sur- 

 rounds it. It decomposes the air, which, imprudently 

 inhaled, produces languor, the person waste^ away, 

 the lungs are affected and in the course of four months 

 he dies of consumption." That this last story, or 

 something akin to it, is commonly believed, is proven 

 by the fact that a prominent citizen once told the 

 writer that the breath of the spreading viper had 

 caused him a two weeks' spell of sickness. 



Many other "snake lies" the writer has heard, and, 

 to tell the truth, believed in, until he came to get his 

 knowledge first hand by studying the creatures in 

 their chosen haunts, when he saw how unworthy of 

 belief many of these stories are. For example, taking 

 the four above noted, and tracing each back to its 

 source, we find that the common house or milk snake, 

 Ophibolus doliatas trianc/ulus (Boie), while crawling, 

 occasionally raises the middle of its body above the 

 ground, as does the measuring or loop worm, and this 

 fact gave rise to the story of the "hoop snake." 



The "glass snake" is a lizard, Ophisaurus ventralis 

 (L.), which-, like other reptiles of that class, chooses at 

 times when captured by the tail, to drop that portion 

 of the body rather than remain a captive; but, as to 

 coupling it on again, no person with any regard for 

 the truth will swear he ever saw it done. 



