TEXAS NATURE OBSERVATIONS AND REMINISCENCES. 166 



A Large King Snake Swallowing One op Its Offspring — A very rare and perhaps only specimen of 

 ' its kind on record ever photo-reproduced from nature ; encountered by my son and some outing companions in 

 the fall of 1910, and photographed by the writer on the spot where found — along a river embankment, south of 

 San Antonio. The large snake was^ about three feet long, and the smaller one about eleven inches, both were 

 coiled up and wiggling inside spme 'grass and weeds; the smaller snake being swallowed several inches. After 

 killing them, they showed two fixed fangs and venom bladders, and both were of the usual banded tricolor: 

 Vermillion red, citrus yellow and jet black circular' stripes. (A simila,r ^nake as this one is depicted elsewhere in 

 this book; but the snake hacl swallowed a different type of snake, of which the writer, after killing the old King 

 snake, in presence of Wm. R, Hoffmann, W. Pfitze, and others, pulled about fourteen inches of the swallowed 

 snake's body out of the other snake's gullet.) 



Skeleton's of King Snake Showing Poison Fangs 

 (Original Photo Taken at Wm. Learn's Reptile Establishment) 



