Deposit of Bones of the Rattle Snake. 85 



genous to its own climate, an admission, contrary to fact, 

 and unsupported by the shadow of authority, we should of 

 course attribute its appearance there to emigration from the 

 contiguous and well supplied regions of the south, rather 

 than to transportation by human agency, from the far less 

 extensive swarms of another continent. 



On the whole. Sir, from these facts, it appears to me, and 

 1 trust will also appear to your better judgment, that the pre- 

 sumptuous hypothesis of Raynal and his successors, is to be 

 considered merely as the genuine offspring of the spirit 

 once so fashionable among a certain class of Kuropean wri- 

 ters, and even now not extinguished, of decrying and dispar- 

 aging all the productions, animal and vegetable, moral and 

 intellectual, of the Western Hemisphere. 



I have the honor to be, Sir, with best wishes for the con- 

 tinued prosperity of your Institution, 

 Your very respectful, 



and obedient humble servant, 



J. A. VANDEN HEUVEL. 



Art. XII. — Some curious facts respecting the Bones of the 

 Rattle Snake ; communicated for this Journal by Profes- 

 sor Jacob Green, in a letter to the Editor, dated 

 Princeton, Dec. 9, 1 820. 



About the year 1748, some labourers in workiiig a quar- 

 ry in this neighbourhood for the stone with which our Col- 

 lege is built, discovered a small cavern, which contained 

 the entire skeletons of an immense number of the rattle 

 snake, (Crotalus.) The bones were in such quantities as to 

 require tvv'o or three carts for their removal. There can, I 

 tliink, be but litlle doubt, that this cavern had once a small 

 opening vi'hich was afterwards closed by the accidental fall 

 of a stone, or some other impediment. This cavehas prob- 

 ably been the winter abode of the rattle snake for 5^ears, 

 where many have died througli age, and others in conse- 

 quence of the circumstance just mentioned. Mr. Hum- 

 boldt, in the third volume of his Personal Narrative, hints 

 at an occurrence somewhat similar to the above. " I had 

 visited the caverns of the Hartz, those of Franconia, and the 

 beautiful gretto of Treshemiensbiz, in the Carpathian 



