ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



»27 



lived to see a free public aquarium in New York, 

 that is so successful and so much appreciated by 

 the public." R. C. O. 



A BIG TRINIDAD SNAKE. 



We have received an interesting letter from 

 Mr. R. R. Mole, of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 

 who has obtained for us all of the bushmaster 

 snakes that we have received from that island. 

 We are also indebted to Mr. Mole for other im- 

 portant reptiles from Trinidad and the coastal 

 regions of Venezuela. From him we obtained 

 our big anaconda ; and relating to these huge 

 water snakes, as found in the region, lie now 

 writes: 



"As you are interested in big anacondas, you 

 may like to know that I have an immense beast 

 now. Although she is not enormous in girth, 

 she is very bony and gaunt, and actually meas- 

 ures (I have taped her), seventeen feet! Her 

 skin hangs loosely upon her, and yet in this con- 

 dition she weighs 104 pounds. Thin as she is, 

 this snake is impressive. As it is not long from 

 the time when these snakes give birth to young, 

 this may account for her emaciated condition. 



"She was captured by the men who captured 

 Big Annie, and when I first saw this new speci- 

 men, I thought they had caught her with a 

 forked stick with a spike in the fork. They 

 solemnly swore that this was not so. Neverthe- 

 less, she had a punctured wound about one inch 

 behind the line of the eyes, and almost in the 

 center of the back of the head. I got her into 

 a large tank, and from later indications I was 

 led to believe that she had fed upon an ant- 

 eater. I found an immense claw which I sup- 

 posed belonged to Tamandua tetradactgla. 

 Further examination revealed pieces of hair 

 which made me positive that she had swallowed 

 a large specimen of our ant-eater. 



"A few days after this I saw the men who 

 captured her, showed them the claw, and they 

 agreed with me, asserting what I had never 

 thought of, — that the Matapel (dog killer), our 

 local name for this ant-eater, had made the 

 wound in the anaconda's head, which I now 

 think quite likely. I annointed this wound with 

 a healing balsam, and the snake now seems tol- 

 erably well, although there is a likelihood of 

 the wound breaking out again. I am going to 

 try to feed this snake with rabbits, in the man- 

 ner prescribed in your book on reptiles. She 

 has one or two superficial wounds about the 

 body, and I am sure the Matapel did not suc- 

 cumb before he had made a terrific fight for 



life. They are dreadfully strong beasts, and 

 their claws are powerful, long and sharp. 



"The other day a dead boa constrictor was 

 brought to me. I think it was larger than 

 Castro. I taped it and it measured eleven feet 

 seven inches in length, and was thickly built. 

 It seized a hunting dog and the dog's owner 

 was so afraid that it would kill the beast, — 'It 

 had lapped it up,' he said, — that he destroyed 

 the snake. It was a wonderful specimen, and I 

 told him that it was worth forty of his wretched 

 curs, such as are used by the peasantry in what 

 they call hunting. 



"To return to anacondas, I don't think there 

 is any doubt from what I have learned lately, 

 that some day I may get a very much larger 

 one than Big Annie or the specimen now in my 

 possession." R. L. D. 



NEW MEMBERS. 

 May 24 — December 12, 1911. 



LIFE MEiMBERS. 



Edward K. Dunham. Robert E. Tod, 



Ben-Ali H. Lounsbery, Stuart C. Squire, 



CORRESPONDING MEMBER. 



Lieut. C. G. Sturtevant. 



ANNUAL MEMBERS. 



Hugo S. Adam, Jr., R. Halsey Jackson, 



F. W. Becker, Mrs. John Stewart Kennedy, 



Kenneth Fisher Bingham, Max Kuempel, 



Mrs. John Borland. Mrs. Lauterbach, 



Clifford B. Brokaw, John L. Lawrence, 



Mrs. Clifford B. Brokaw. George R. Lockwood, 



Irving Swan Brown, Guy Loomis, 



Hilary R. Chambers, Rev. Arthur Lowndes, D.D., 



Charles Martin Clark, Howard Mansfield, 



John Conyngham, George E. Marcus, 



Charles S. Cook, Charles I. McBurney, 



Wm. T. Crocker, James McCutcheon, 



Miss Ella H. Davison, Henry E. Meeker, 



Frank Eveland, J. Lawrence McKeever, 



A. L. Everett, Horace R. Moorhead, 



Colvin Farley, Hugo Xewman, 



Leon P. Feustman, Leonard E. Opdycke, 



Charles Fowler, Jr. Wainwright Parish, 



Miss Clementina Furniss, Chr. H. Parizot, 



John M. Gaines, William W. Phillips, 



Merrill W. Gallaway, Alexander G. Ruthven, 



Mrs. Robert D. Graham, B. Ayniar Sands, 



Mrs. John Greenough, Mrs. F. C. W. Smith, 



E. Morgan Grinnell, Roland K. Smith, 



Thomas C. Hall, Mrs. John Sonclair, 



Frank L. Hall, Mrs. Wm. Frederick Stafford 



Harold Herrick, Mrs. Edwin Thorne, 



Charles F. Hoffman, Howard Townsend, 



.Miss M. U. Hoffman, Harold Yarcoe, 



A. Barton Hepburn, Mrs. John D. Wood, 



Mrs. Albert I Ierter, Mrs. William Woodward, Sr., 



