FIGHT BETWEEN SNAKES. 179 



strength to the boa, but is far more agile. 

 Neither of them are poisonous, nor have the 

 moveable fangs ; but the black snake is quite 

 harmless to man, except in frightening those 

 who are not acquainted with his habits, for 

 he is the most vicious and ill-tempered of all 

 the species : he will fly at any creature, and 

 springs much farther than any other snake ; 

 a full-grown one may measure nine or ten 

 feet in length. The most curious peculiarity 

 of this snake is the mortal antipathy he has 

 for the rattlesnake, and they never meet 

 without a pitched battle, which, if they are 

 anything like equal in size, always ends in 

 favour of the black snake. Whether snakes 

 bite each other in fighting I cannot say, 

 though most probably they do not, from 

 having no room to dart, but if they do, the 

 venom has no effect upon the black snake ; 

 though I have read an account of some ex- 

 periments being made at Boston on the rattle- 

 snake, who was irritated to bite himself, and 

 died of the effect. I was witness to a fight 

 between two of the snakes one afternoon ; it 

 is the habit of all snakes to go to drink at 

 the small, hidden streams at about four 

 o'clock in the afternoon, and a rattlesnake 

 and a black one were both descending op- 



