105 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



Milk snakes also climb into bushes to rob birds of their un- 

 fledged young. Two or three years ago, my brother, while hoeing 

 in his garden, heard cries of distress from a pair of bush sparrows 

 that had a nest full of nearly fledged young ones in the forks of a 

 bush near by. Upon going to the spot, a large milk snake was seen 

 twined around the stem of the small tree, with its head raised just 

 above the young birds, as if in the act of selecting the best one for 

 his next victim. He at once killed the snake, and on opening its 

 maw, found a young, recently swallowed bird and a half grown field 

 mouse. In August, three or four years ago, my son, while plough- 

 ing a summer fallow, chanced to overturn the last fangs of an old 

 pine stump, under which he found fourteen snake's eggs. They 

 were rather larger than robins eggs, obtusely oval in shape, and 

 with an outside resembling parchment in color and consistency. 

 Upon giving one of them a rather rough shaking, it divided sym- 

 metrically by a line circling the small diameter, and a perfectly 

 formed young milk snake, eight and a half inches long, emerged. 

 It was interesting to see how neatly and skilfully the young ophidians 

 were spirally coiled in their parchment-like integument, so that, at 

 maturity, they had to exert but a little muscular force or contraction, 

 when lo, the integument divided into two neat little leatherlike cups, 

 and the whilom prisoner was free and as full of life as a young 

 rooster chicken. It seems to be the habit for a brood of young snakes 

 to keep near together for a considerable part of the first summer of 

 their existence, for about three weeks after uprooting this nest, a 

 group of young milk snakes was found. They measured eleven and 

 a half inches in length, so had grown three inches in as many weeks. 



The milk snake has the reputation of being one of the most 

 agile of its tribe, and I have heard of their being found pursuing 

 mice among hay or sheaves of grain mowed away in barns. Those 

 who saw them believe that they had crawled up some angle of the 

 boards that enclose the sides of the barn ; however this may be, it is 

 certain that the muscular energy that controls the scaly covering of 

 the underside of the snake's body gives them power of rapid loco- 

 motion, as well as power to adhere to narrow surfaces. One 

 acquaintance told me that he saw a milk snake moving rapidly 

 along the edge of an inch board that formed the upper board of a 

 straight fence, near one of the posts of which a peeewit flycatcher 



