62 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



Group IV. Striped or Garter Snakes. 



Four slender bodied reptiles, whose general color 

 consists of three light stripes on a darker ground, with 

 sometimes intervening darker spots, and with the 

 lower side unspotted, belong to this group of harmless 

 snakes. The scales of all are keeled and in 19, rarely 

 21, rows. 



Of these the ribbon snake, Eutainia saurita (L.), is 

 much more slender and graceful, and withal a hand- 

 somer species than any other, its color 



The Ribbon , . j r i i 4 i 



Snake being a dark, glossy, chocolate-brown, 



with the three stripes of a bright green- 

 ish yellow. It reaches a length of three feet or more, 

 and its favorite haunts are damp thickets and the bor- 

 ders of streams and ponds, where, on the first bright 

 sunny days of spring, several may sometimes be found 

 in close proximity. It often takes to water to escape 

 its enemies, swimming with graceful curves of. its long 

 slender tail, but it is by no means aquatic in its habits. 

 The food of the ribbon snake is chiefly insects and the 

 small cricket frogs, its body being too slender to 

 encompass many of those larger forms of life in which 

 other snakes delight. A stouter bodied, darker col- 

 ored variety of this species is sometimes called Fairey's 

 garter snake. 



The common garter snake, Eatainia sirtalis (L.), 

 is the most common reptile in the United States, 

 and at the same time one of the most variable. 

 Four varieties are known to occur in Indiana as 

 follows : 



