1880. | | Loblogy. 207 
brought them together. Some hundreds of them could be 
counted, and all of them I found in a lively state of humor, hiss- 
ing at me with threatening glances, with combined forces and 
with such a persistency that stones thrown upon them could not 
stop them nor alter the position of a single animal. They would 
make the proper movements and the stone would roll off. All 
the snakes in this lump were common snakes (Zutenia sir- 
talis L.) The second time I noticed a ball of black snakes (Bas- 
canton constrictor L.) rolling slowly down a steep and stony hill- 
side on the bank of the same river, but about two miles above 
Union Factory, Baltimore county, Md. Some of the snakes 
were of considerable length and thickness, and, as I noticed 
clearly, kept together by procreative impulses. _ 
It is surely not agreeable to go near enough to such a wandering, 
living and hissing hundred-headed ball to examine the doings and 
actions, and search for the inner causes of such a snake associa- 
tion. As, furthermore, the localities for such mass-meetings of 
snakes are becoming rarer every year, and our rapidly in- 
creasing cultivation of the country must make it hotter for snakes 
everywhere, only a few naturalists could see such a sight, even if 
they should look for it-in proper time, which, as stated above, 
seems to be the first warm days in spring.—Z&. L., Ellicott 
Mills, Ma. 
REVERSED MELANTHONES.—It is a not uncommon circumstance 
for collectors, in taking any considerable number of the various 
so-called species of Melantho, to find a few of them heterostro- 
phal, or sinistral. Dr. Kirtland, in the Ohio Report (quoted by 
Binney in Land and Fresh-water Shells of North America, p. 44), 
described one of these abnormal forms as Paludina heterostropha, 
though he evidently was not altogether clear as to its specific 
value, for he remarks, “ I formerly considered it as a mere variety 
of P. decisa Say.” is same shell Mr. Binney has referred to 
Melantho ponderosus Say. That all of these sinistral shells are — 
abnormal forms of one or more of the well-known Melanthones 
is now conceded by most naturalists. It was with not a little 
surprise,. therefore, that the writer recently received from a col- 
lector in Illinois a reversed shell of M. subsolidus Anth. labeled 
with the old and almost forgotten name given by Dr. Kirtland. 
Having collected a very large number of the three species com- 
mon in New York, viz., M. rufus Hald., M. integer De Kay, and 
M. decisus Say. 1 wish to place on record the following observa- — 
tions made in the spring of 1877, with reference to the relative 
abundance of these reversed forms. page Gee 
he method pursued was as follows: From impregnated shells, — 
about the time of parturition, the young Melanthones were taken 
and separated into lots of one hundred specimens each. Every 
shell was then carefully inspected, and it was found in the case of 
M. integer that two per cent. of every one hundred ‘shells were 6 
