100 INEXPERIENCE OF THE SMALL ANIMALS. 



record Dr. Mitchell gives of the behavior of the small animals he was 

 constantly placing in the cages of his large colony of rattlesnakes, bears 

 directly upon this point, and has been confirmed by other writers. None 

 of them exhibited any terror at the company they found themselves in, 

 after they had recovered from their nervousness at being handled. " The 

 smaller birds . . . soon became amusingly familiar with the snakes, and 

 were seldom molested, even when caged with six or eight large crotali. 

 The mice, which were similarly situated, lived on terms of easy intimacy 

 with the snakes, sitting on their heads, moving around their gliding coils, 

 undisturbed and unconscious of danger." The little creatures were eager 

 yet timorous to examine every part of the folded and strangely. clothed 

 occupants of the prison-cage. "When visitors as large as dogs — against 

 which, by the way, this snake shows special antipathy* — tried a close in- 

 vestigation, the serpents themselves became fearful, sounded their rattles, 

 and struck in self-defence. 



This innocence of danger on the part of birds, mice, guinea-pigs, etc., 

 would go strongly against the position so often assumed, to begin with, 

 that the rattling would be disadvantageous to the snake because it would 

 instantly frighten away the small animals intended as prey ; since, so long 

 as the serpent does not chase them, they seem to associate no harm with 

 his face or his music. Why should they? How can they have had any 

 experience of him that would be effective to their minds? A horse or 

 deer is struck, suffers, and recovers, but remembers tenaciously (very 

 likely instructs his young) what it was that inflicted the injury. Never 

 a squirrel or warbler survives to profit by the lesson or tell the tale, and 

 usually there are no witnesses to the deed. The smaller agile serpents 

 would be more likely to inspire general alarm, because they are often 

 seen in hot pursuit of prey they do not always catch. 



But though it is possible that by playing upon the curiosity, or even 

 by deceiving through mimicry, the crepitating tail might now and then 

 become useful, I do not think that, as an aid in food-getting, it is ever of 

 more than accidental service. As a matter of sober fact, the rattle is not 

 heard when the crotalus is seeking its prey, which is procured by stealth- 

 ily crawling upon it, or by lying patient and rigid, ambushed in the ac- 

 customed haunts of small animals, until chance favors. 



* A strange bit of Indian superstition may be mentioned here. Among the northern 

 Californians, according to Bancroft, snakes appear to get most of the blame for sickness. 

 The medicinemen of this race pretend to discover the locality of the reptile-spirit in the 

 body of a suffering patient by barking at it for some time, the idea being to frighten it 

 away as a dog would a live snake. 



