THE RATTLE, OF THE RATTLESNAKE. 
BY PROFESSOR SAMUEL AUGHEY. 
I wish to contribute my observations on the rattlesnake, having 
been specially favored in opportunities for the study of this rep- 
til 
e. 
Of all the articles that have appeared on the subject in the 
Nartvrauisr that by Mr. Putnam* appears to me to present the 
most satisfactory theory concerning the use of the rattles. I am 
Satisfied that one of their uses is to bring the sexes together. 
In July, 1869, I was engaged in surveying along the Logan 
river in Wayne County, Nebraska. After completing my con- 
tract I devoted a day to investigating the natural history of the 
neighborhood. While washing a collection of unios at the water’s - 
edge, I heard the familiar rattle of the Massasauga (Crotalophorus 
tergeminus). I quietly crept up the bank and cautiously looking 
over the level bottom I saw, at the distance of about thirty feet, a 
rattlesnake coiled up with head erect and gazing in an opposite 
direction from my position. Every three or five minutes the snake 
would cease rattling for a minute or more and then commence 
again. In about half an hour from the time that I first saw the 
Snake I observed another rattlesnake. approach the first one. 
Closer and closer the second one approached, until at length they 
met and indulged in a sexual embrace. I watched them for at 
least an hour and left them at last without disturbing them. 
The next year at the Bow river in the same state I saw the 
Same thing repeated under similar circumstances. In neither case 
pu I ascertain whether it was the male or female that gave the 
call. 
I am satisfied that’ the theory + that the rattle resembles the noise 
made by the Cicada, and that it is employed because of this resem- 
blance to entrap birds, etc.,is a mistake. I have been accustomed 
to the sound of the Cicada and the rattle of the rattlesnake from 
my youth, and soon learned to distinguish them, although there is 
imes a striking resemblance between them. My familiarity 
with them was gained in my native state amid the Alleghanies of 
raa ee aN a 
(85) 
* AMERICAN NATURALIST, Vol. VI, p. 693. tl.c. p. 32. 
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