“by letting vipers bite a piece of rag, and then ees 
Setdhing it from their mouth, he easily extracted the 
fangs, mad that he then frequently put them between his 
shirt and skin; d broughtthem away alive. 
_ Snakes ee easily med, an instance of which is men-_ 
*s Naturalists? Calendar; and there is 
-2 stuffed specimen of a snake now in the Zoological Mu- 
seum, whith, when aliy e, was perfectly tame, and had. 
been eleven eas i the possessionsof the gentleman whe 
presented it to that society, and to whom it,showed a 
strong attachment. Eton boys have always been great 
; tamei of snakes, and many aneedotes are related by them 
of their attachment tostheir owners. v 
6 Snakes, unlike the viper, are ov viparous, and their eggs 
: ane link ed together i in a sort of chain, and are each about 
as big a a large marble. They feed on frogs, mice, cer- 
tain msects, and also young birds. It is supposed by 
some people that they destroy the eggs of partridges.and 
« Pheagits; and for this reason many ‘Pamekeey ers samake a 
nt of killing them. Sn have someti nes been found. 
on the brane es of trees, where they have contr Arad to get 
im Search of young birds. A” person lately informed me 
that he had found one in that situation. A snake has been 
ad 
seen to swa ae newly-hatched chicken; and I once ob- 
served one in the act of attempting to swallow a full- 
grown frog. Iwas attracted to ae by the aries of 
the latter, which . Se lo piteous. The 
snake made grea efforts to get the g down his roat, 
which he at Tast succeeded in doing. “By trampling on a 
eo" which has just swallowed a frog, the latter is easily 
ejected from the stomach of the Renee 
The 8) of snakes annually casting their skin or slough 
s. Ihave fo the age of one a 
young ee 
+ is 
pearing perfectly fresh. Shale seems ave been 
, aware of this. & 
e«@ om, 
“There the snake throws her, enamell’d skin.” 
- ,* rs Ms. Nicur’s Dream. 
° =. " 
&t % ees ' 
intje 
on 
The circumstance of the Bria © twisted in the way 
I found it amongst e twigs, seems to prove that the 
_snake had not Oren able torid himself of it without havi 
recourse to something not very pliable which would oi 
him in the operation, although Mr. White sy t heh 
found the slough in a field near a hedge count is 
very eee He says, « About a middle of this 
month, (September,) we found in a field, near a hedge, 
the slough of a large snake, which seemed to have been 
newly cast. From circumstances it appeared to haye been 
drawn off backward, like a stocking, or woman’s glove. 
RURAL SPORTS. ont 
‘Not oily the whole skin, but the scales from the very 
éyes, were peeled off, and appeared in the head of tha 
slough like a pair of spectacles. The reptile, at the time 
of changing his eoat, had entangled himself intricately in 
the grass and weeds; so that the friction of the stalks 
and blades might promote this curious shifting of his 
eXuvie. 
~ 
” 22 Lubrica serpens 
“ Exuit in spinis vestem.”—Lucrer. 
It would be a most entertaining sight could a person be 
an eye-witness to such a feat, and see the snake in the 
act of changing his garment. As the convexity of the 
eyes in the slough is now inward, that cire 
is a proof that the skin has been turned; ; 
that now the present inside is much dime 
If you look through the scales of the snake’s s eyes from the 
concave side, viz., as the reptile used them, - _temcssen 
bjects much. Thus it appears, from what has been said, 
ae snakes crawl out of the mouth of their own sloughs, 
and quit the tail part last, just as eels are skinned by a 
eookmaid. While the scales of the eyes are growing 
Joose, and a new skin is forming, the creature in appear- 
ance gust be blind, and feel Absit in a very awky 
uneasy situation.’ ’—Gleanings Nat. Hist. 
; 4 
ie 
oe THE BEE. : 
6 Where the Bee 
Strays diligent, and with th’ extracted balm * 
— woodbine loads his little thigh.” —Tomson. 
I wave some experiment hives which enable me very 
accurately to inspect the operations of my Bees. From 
the construction of the hives, the combs are necessarily 
built between two panes of glass, so that on drawing the 
sliders the two surfaces of a comb are exposed to view. 
Tn this way I am able to see almost every thing that is 
going for ward. 
~ When the Queen-Bee has an inclination to deposit her 
eggs, she goes forth, accompanied by six or eight work- 
ing Bees as a guard, and whose stomachs are filled with 
honey. She is very deliberate in her motions, and seems 
to proceed with great caution. She first looks into a cell, 
and if she finds it perfectly empty, she draws up her long 
body, inserts her tail into the cell, and deposits an egg. 
In , she slowly proceeds till she has dropped ten 
or twelve eggs, when perhaps feeling exhausted, she is 
fed by one of the attendant Bees, who have surrounded 
