NOTES ON THE FOOD AND FEEDING HABITS 



OF SOME AMERICAN 



REPTILES. 



C. S. BRIMI.EY. 



The following notes are from personal observations made 

 during the past ten or twelve years on various reptiles, both 

 wild and in captivity. 



Taking the snakes first, their method of swallowing their 

 prey deserves attention, and to understand this it must be re- 

 membered that both the upper and lower jaws and the teeth- 

 bearing bones of the palate are united by ligaments only, thus 

 rendering the mouth capable of very great dilation. Further- 

 more,any ordinary harmless snake has four rows of sharp back- 

 wards pointing teeth in the upper jaw and two rows in the 

 lower. 



Now, when a colubrine snake, a Spreading Adder (Heterodon 

 platyrhinus) for instance, seizes its prey, in this species always 

 a toad, it at once commences, so soon as it has a good hold, to 

 work one side of the jaws forward over the animal with a chew- 

 ing motion;then when it has worked that side as far as possible 

 it takes a firm hold with that side and works the other side for- 

 ward over the animal alternately until it is well within the 

 mouth, when it is pushed down into the stomach by the muscu- 

 lar contraction of the body; the snake in fact literally glides 

 over its prey, after it is once safely inside,of ten pushing it down 

 by crawling forward with its side pressed against some hard 

 object. 



In the case of Coluber obsoletus or any other of the chicken 

 snakes swallowing a hen's egg, an apparently impossible feat 

 when one sees the snake and egg side by side, the modus ope- 



1906{ 149 



