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disturbance or interference will prevent their eating. 

 There are other snakes, however, of which the mus- 

 surama is perhaps the best example, which are very good 

 captives, and at the same time very fearless, showing a 

 complete indifference not only to being observed but to 

 being handled when they are feeding. 



There is in the United States a beautiful and attrac- 

 tive snake, the king-snake, with much the same habits 

 as the mussurama. It is friendly toward mankind, and 

 not poisonous, so that it can be handled freely. It feeds 

 on other serpents, and will kill a rattlesnake as big as 

 itself, being immune to the rattlesnake venom. Mr. 

 Ditmars, of the Bronx Zoo, has made many interesting 

 experiments with these king-snakes. I have had them 

 in my own possession. They are good-natured and can 

 generally be handled with impunity, but I have known 

 them to bite, whereas Doctor Brazil informed me that 

 it was almost impossible to make the mussurama bite a 

 man. The king-snake will feed greedily on other snakes 

 in the presence of man — I knew of one case where it 

 partly swallowed another snake while both were in a 

 small boy's pocket. It is immune to viper poison but it 

 is not immune to colubrine poison. A couple of years 

 ago I was informed of a case where one of these king- 

 snakes was put into an enclosure with an Indian snake- 

 eating cobra or hamadryad of about the same size. It 

 killed the cobra but made no efifort to swallow it, and 

 very soon showed the effects of the cobra poison. I be- 

 lieve it afterward died, but unfortunately I have mislaid 

 my notes and cannot now remember the details of the 

 incident. 



