=the jar. 
March 16, 1894. 
it to get many a good meal, striking their beaks against 
the ground, until a worm shows its head, and then siezing 
it and drawing it forth. It is also said that the grotesque 
dances which some wading birds indulge in are solely for 
the purpose of attracting earthworms~to the surface of 
the ground. 
My own attention was attracted to the habit by noticing 
that a number of worms were wriggling about my feet as I 
stood talking with a neighbor in his freshly plowed garden. 
I had been moving about and tapping the soft loam with 
one foot, and the worms had appeared to find out the 
cause of the disturbance. 
The ability of these animals, in the direction of climbing, 
is remarkable, and probably explains their occurrence in 
apparently inaccessible places, such as eave-troughs, etc., 
although it is not impossible that they are sometimes 
carried to such places by birds, or even that their eggs 
are blown to them by the wind and afterwards hatched. 
I have seen them climb out of a Mason fruit jar of the 
quart size, in which there was not over an-inch of earth, 
ascending the reverse curve at the top with as much ease 
as they did the straight part. In this case they were 
assisted by a certain amount of moisture on the inside of 
The conclusions deducible from the foregoing 
are: : 
First, Phat the worms do not rain down, but come from 
unpaved ground, near the walks and pavements on which 
they are found. 
Second, That in some cases, at least, they can live for 
a long time entirely under water. 
Third, That they may be attracted to the surface by 
tapping or striking on the ground. 
Fourth, Vhat they climb up perpendicular surfaces 
easily, even those of glass, if they are moist. 
CHARLES A. Davis. 
Alma, Mich. 
Cats Hunting Snakes. 
In a late number of Sczence Mr. D. S. Martin asks for 
information in regard to the snake hunting habit of cats. 
It is such a common thing for cats to hunt snakes in this 
region of country that it seems to be expected of every 
ranch cat that she, or he, will hunt them. TI have often 
seen my cat bring in snakes from three to four feet long. 
These are generally what are known as gopher or chicken 
snakes. 
In Lafcadio Hearn’s wonderfully magnificent word pic- 
ture of Martinique (‘‘A Midsummer Trip to the West 
Indies”) he describes the grand forests of tropical 
vegetation in words that seem to bring them before one 
and then adds: ‘‘ The lord of all these is the terrible 
fer-de-lance, the trigonocephalus, the bothrops lanceola- 
tus, the craspodecephalus, deadliest of all occidental thana- 
tophidia.” His description of this snake is fine, and the 
manner in which it reigns supreme over the mountains, 
ravines, and forests during the day and the parks, high- 
ways and places of public resort at night shows plainly 
that he is right when he says the king of the island is this 
terrible snake. But even the king has his conqueror, and 
though it may be a long quotation I think the readers of 
Sczence will thank me for giving the words of this great 
master of language. 
“<The creature who fears the monster least is the brave 
cat. Seeing asnake, she at once carries her kittens to a place 
of safety, then boldly advances to the encounter. She 
will walk to the very limit of the serpent’s striking range, 
and begin to feint, teasing him, startling him, trying to 
draw his blow. How the emerald and topazine eyes glow 
then !—they are flames. A moment more, and the trian- 
SCIENCE 
151 
gular head, hissing from the coil, flashes swift as if 
moved by wings. But swifter still the strong stroke of 
the armed paw that smites the horror aside, flinging it, 
mangled and gasping, in the dust. Nevertheless, pussy 
does not yet dare to spring; the enemy, still active, has 
almost instantly reformed his coil; but she is again in 
front of him, watching—vertical pupil against vertical 
pupil. Again the lashing stroke; again the beautiful 
countering; the living death is hurled aside, the scaled 
skin is deeply torn, one eye socket has ceased to flame. 
Once more the stroke of the serpent; once more the 
light, quick, cutting blow. But now the trigonocephalus 
is blind, is stupefied; before he can attempt to coil, pussy 
has leaped upon him, nailing the horrible flat head fast to 
the ground with her two sinewy paws. Now let him lash, 
writhe, twine, strive to strangle her!—%in vain! he will 
never lift his head: an instant more and he lies still: the 
fine white teeth of the cat have severed the vertebra just 
behind the triangular skull.”’ 
He does not say the cats eat them. Probably they do. 
With us they hunt, kill and eat common snakes. <A 
writer in the \mericus (Ga.) Republican in March, 1880, 
tells of a fight between a cat and a rattlesnake, but, 
though the cat sought the encounter, both animals were 
killed. F. A. Hasster, M.D., Pu. D. 
Santa Ana, Calif. 
Mesabi Iron Range. 
In my paper on the ‘‘ Mesabi Iron Range,” published 
in Scvence, Feb. 9, I should have given credit t+) Horace 
V. Winchell for the rock series, instead of to Prof. N. 
H. Winchell. E. P. JENNINGS. 
Ironwood, Mich, 
Temperature in High and Low Areas. 
In Scvence for April 14, 1893, and again for Sept. 22, I 
took issue with Dr. Hann, of Vienna, on a single point 
in his latest discussion of this question. In the 
Meteorologische Zeitschrift for December Dr. Hann again 
attempts to answer my argument. The original investiga- 
tion was of 27 maxima and 27 minima of pressure that 
crossed the Alps from Oct., 1886, to Dec., r890. In this 
study, the temperature and pressure at Sonnblick 
(10,170 ft.) were compared with the same conditions at 
Ischl (1530 ft.) at the base. This would give an air 
column of 8640 ft. Dr. Hann found that during the 
passage of high areas the temperature at Ischl was higher 
than in low areas, and I took the ground that this was 
directly contrary to the usual, well ascertained law, and 
hence that this whole exhaustive investigation attempting 
to prove that in high areas at Sonnblick the temperature 
is higher than in low areas must be discarded as erroneous. 
Dr. Hann now makes no attempt to explain how he 
obtained such a peculiar result, but claims, first, that my 
point is a trivial one—‘‘Die von Herrn Hazen citirten 
Ziffern enthalten nur die triviale Wahrheit, dass es zuwei- 
len bei hohem Barometerstand auch im Winter warmer 
sein kann, als bei niedrigem Barometerstand.” Second, 
he shows that in the latter part of his original investiga- 
tion he proved that the usual law holds in the Alps. 
I desire to note one or two points in closing my share 
in this discussion. 
First, I protest against the use-of the expression 
““Barometerstand”’ in such studies. I called attention to 
this in 1887 in my first article on this most important 
theory Dr. Hann had accepted from an investigation of 
M. Decherows, namely, that at some height in the air 
the temperature was higher in a high area than in a low 
area, ‘‘ Barometerstand” means barometer position or 
