THE PINE SNAKE OP NEW JERSEY. 3 



to seek. The poor thing had the cares of maternity coming upon 

 her. On the 18th of July she laid twelve white eggs ; and a 

 beautiful sight did they present. There were two clusters, the 

 eggs adhering to one another. Two of the eggs were under the 

 average size. These seemed to have been laid first. There was 

 one still smaller which seemed to have been laid the last. In one 

 of these clusters were seven eggs and in the other five. I was 

 astonished at their size. A single egg measured twenty-two lines 

 in length, and sixteen in width. They were in fact as large as 

 the eggs of an ordinary bantam fowl. One of them weighed 543 

 grs., and the whole weighed about fifteen ounces avoirdupois. 

 They were of nearly the same form and size at each end, except 

 that at the upper end, or the end last evicted, was a little cusp, or 

 teat-like prominence, precisely such as characterizes the fossil cop- 

 rolites, and due to the same cause, the nipping off, or closing up 

 of the cloaca, as the egg in its soft condition passed out. The 

 eggs at this precise moment must be quite soft, as they were 

 agglutinated together side by side. An attempt to separate a 

 pair succeeded in pulling off a portion of the shell which adhered 

 to the other egg. In this regard the resemblance to insect eggs 

 was striking. The shell had a fine and pretty marking, as of 

 reticulation. 



An attempt was made to hatch the eggs, but without success. 

 They were put in a box of sand, which was moistened, and every 

 effort made to preserve the proper temperature by keeping il 

 warm ; but the eggs perished. It is curious that in all my inquiry 

 of the old settlers in the Pines, I have learned nothing about the 

 eggs of the pine snake, — no one, so far as I could ascertain, had 



It is interesting to observe the pine snake drink. It lays its 

 head usually flat upon the water, letting the lower jaw just sink a 

 little below the surface, when with a very uniform movement, the 

 water is drawn up into the mouth and passed into its throat. It 

 is the same as the drinking of a horse ; that is, it is a true drink- 

 ing. With a snake, lapping is an impossibility ; the form and 

 position of the tongue arc unsuitcd for such an act. The tongue 

 of a serpent is like a flattened cord, divided at the forward end 

 into two pointed threads as soft and flexible as silken fibres. This 

 delicate organ is projected from a round orifice in the middle, and 

 somewhat forward of the trough or hollow of the lower jaw. And 



