ZOOLOGICAL SOCILT^ HULLKTIN 



293 



Xaturc had t)ecn strangely lavish in providing so 

 "horrible" a creature with such striking hues. Of 

 queries there were innumerable ones, relating to all 

 sorts of sensational habits attributed to reptiles. 



These conditions have been decidedly reversed, 

 and we may credit the awakened desire for facts 

 about the cold-blooded creatures to our methods 

 of exhibiting the collection. A great number of 

 school-children visit the Reptile House in classes 

 with their teachers, and from the visiting public 

 we note the greater number of questions to be 

 prompted by a sym|)athetic interest. Everything 

 possible has been done to assist the classes. Skele- 

 ton heads of harmless and poisonous snakes and a 

 series of dissections have been prepared, which 

 greatly help the teacher. Rut the most surprising 

 part of this class work consists of what would have 

 been considered, a few years ago, as quite a dreadful 

 performance. This consists of the actual handling 

 of varitms harmless snakes by the young students. 

 We have classes coming to the Park in which young 

 girls of fourteen or fifteen years think lut little of 

 passing from one to another a six-foot King Snake, 

 and minutely examining the creature's glittering 

 scales, the symmetrical arrangement of the head 

 plates, the playing of the forked tongue and other 

 serpentine characteristics. Imagine such a per- 

 formance before the Reptile House was a reality! 

 It would have started a newspaper story completely 

 acR>ss the continent. 



This is merely an example of how the aversion 

 for snakes gives way with a real knt)wledge of the 

 creature. Many times has the writer made a con- 

 vert, and within five minutes. A little reasoning 

 is necessary to e.xplain away, the time-worn fallacies 

 about reptiles being slimy and clammy to the touch, 

 that the tongue is not a "sting," nor is the snake 

 naturally antagonistic to man. It is surprising to 

 note the effect of this httle knowledge, together with 

 a subsequent demonstration as to a ser])ent"s really 

 docile actions when handled. To the astonishment 

 of one who but a few moments before declared a 

 snake the personification of all that is loathsome, 

 comes a sudden fascinated interest, a realization 

 that the creature is actually in wonderful contrast 

 to every idea previously imagined. Thus the value 

 of persistent eft'orts to enlighten u])on a «ncglected 

 subject. 



A matter of considerable importance in the e.x- 

 hibition of living reptiles for educational purposes 

 is the provision made in the cages of certain con- 

 ditions calculated to induce the specimens to 

 exhibit their respective normal habits. Take, for 

 instance, some desert vipers, tree boas, tropical 

 whip snakes and water snakes, and place all of the 

 specimens in similar cages, with gravel and the 

 almost proverbial awkward tree-trunk. Considered 

 theoretically, all of the snakes have been suitably 

 provided for, yet the conditions may be altogether 



wrong to encourage the peculiar hal>ils of each 

 s])ecies. Place the vipers on an extremely fine 

 sand to imitate that of their native deserts, and note 

 how (juickly they flatten their sides, shovelling the 

 sand t)ver the body until nothing Init the flat head 

 is exposed to view. Provide the tree boas with 

 long, horizontal boughs, and each is soon coiled 

 in an iridescent ball in one of the smaller crutches. 

 Give the whiji snakes a few brushy branches, and 

 how wonderfully they interlace liieir slender bodies 

 among tjie boughs, displaying remarkable feats of 

 balancing. And as to the water snakes, a large 

 tank effects an immediate transformation, for the 

 slow-crawling serpents are at once changed to 

 aquatic creatures of striking suppleness with an 

 agility that makes them a terror to fishes. Such 

 arrangements appeal just as strongly to the lizards 

 and chelonians. Install many of the lizards in 

 sandy yards and they display a s])eed in running 

 that is amazing, while many oj them run on their 

 poverjid hind lc(;s. In an ordinary cage, similar 

 actions would never be e.xhibitcd. 



So to this, one of the many important considera- 

 tions in the exhibition of reptiles, we have devoted 

 considerable study. The result not alone excites 

 sympathetic observation in the reptiles, but adds to 

 the general attractive a])pearancc of the building. 

 Of one thing we must be careful, however, and that 

 is to ])reveiit the burrowing snakes and lizards 

 altogether disapj tearing from view, yet furnishing 

 them with conditions in a measure favoring the life 

 to which they are adapted. The proposition is one 

 of our puzzles, though we have managed to keep 

 the delicate and beautiful coral snakes of the tropics 

 on a thin laver of wood-pul]i, dug from the heart of 

 a decaying tree. Over the soft, damp medium the 

 snake crawls about and a|)i)ears fairly contented, 

 while the greater part of its brilliantly ringed body 

 is constantly in view. 



.\s far as possible we have endeavored to group 

 our sjiecimens in a manner apjiealing to pojiular 

 divisions. Thus, in immediate proximity arc the 

 various species of rattlesnakes — a well-known group 

 of deadly North American serpents — and the ditTer- 

 ent species of cobras, the most dangerous serpents 

 of the Old World. Here one may note the dift'cr- 

 cnce between the characteristic thick-bodied, flat- 

 headed Crotaline snakes and the venomous mem- 

 bers of the Coluhrid,\ a family embracing the 

 greater number of the harmless serpents and some of 

 the most deadly kno-un s/iecies. like the cobras and 

 their allies, which differ from their harmless rela- 

 tions only by the possession of a jiair of very short, 

 t'lxed. j)oison-conducting fangs in the forward por- 

 tion of the upper jaw. In their general outlines, un- 

 less the "hood" is spread the cobras look exactly 

 like the slender-bodied, harmless serpents. The 

 significance of this arrangement may be appreciated 

 when it is cx])lained that the most frequent r|uery of 



