58 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOREST. 



an evil thing to wreak vengeance upon — a sort of 

 scapegoat for the sins of all creation ! 



Ever since that unfortunate incident in the gar- 

 den of Eden the serpent has had heaped upon his 

 back the abiding enmity of the human race ; but this 

 is a mere trifle so far as the cause of the ill feeling 

 toward the reptile is concerned ; the real truth is, we 

 do not like his appearance or his ways, and we kill 

 him upon any and all occasions regardless of his his- 

 torical associations. 



Now this is all wrong ; we must learn to let the 

 snake alone, or else .in the long run we will be the 

 sufferers. In this eastern part of the country we 

 have only two venomous snakes, the rattlesnake and 

 the copperhead ; all the rest are absohitely harmless. 

 As for these two dangerous reptiles, their venomous 

 character has been greatly overestimated, and a great 

 deal of sensational nonsense has been unnecessarily 

 connected with them through the credulity of the 

 ignorant. Not more than two dogs in nine die who 

 have been Intten by the rattlesnake.* The copper- 

 head is by far a less venomous reptile than the other, 

 but to-day both are so rarely met with that they 

 scarcely deserve attention at all as familiar animals. 



The rattlesnake still lives in some of the remote 



* The Poison of Serpents. S. Weir Mitchell. The Century 

 Magazine, 1889, p. .'514. 



