Natural Science News, 



VOL. I ALBION, N. Y., NOVEMBEE 9, 3895. No. 41 



Natural Science News. 



A Weekly Journal Devoted to 

 Natural History. 



FRANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Correspondence and Items of Interest to the 

 student of any of the various branches of the 

 Natural Sciences solicited from all. 



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 Snakes and Fishes. 



One of those quiet workers con- 

 nected with the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology, at Cambridge, 

 who for years has been conducting 

 most interesting researches, is Dr. 

 Samuel Garman, whose name very 

 rarely appears in the newspapers, 

 yet whose work is of such quality 

 that it has gained him the highest 

 honors from institutions abroad. 



Dr. Garman is a Western man, 

 and has been on the staff of the 

 Museum for thirty years or more. 

 He was with the elder Agassiz in 

 South America and elsewhere, and 

 since that time he has accompan- 

 ied or led a number of others of 

 the expeditions of this institution. 

 At the time that Stanley made his 

 celebrated march across Africa, 

 Dr. Garman was just about to 

 head a small party for exploration 

 in the Dark Continent, but the ex- 

 citement among the natives which 

 followed the former expedition 

 made it seem judicious to give the 

 latter up. 



Dr. Garman's particular field in 

 the animal kingdom is that of the 

 snakes and other reptiles and fish- 

 es. He can tell tales from his 

 own experience which would put 

 to blush the most imaginative of 

 the stories of the authors of today, 

 and is well prepared to hold his 

 own when the conversation takes 

 on a fishy strain, even in the pres- 

 ence of the oldest and most for- 

 tunate of anglers. 



He is on intimate terms with all 

 the snakes, handles them without 

 fear, keeps them about his labora- 

 tory (in cages however) for pur- 



poses of study, and has discovered 

 no end of curious things about 

 them, all of which are faithfully 

 stored in great volumes of publi- 

 cations, where the public has hard- 

 ly a chance to get at them. 



A rattlesnake, >a native of Mis- 

 souri, has boarded with him for 

 upward of two years. It is a 

 brightly marked beast, more vivid- 

 ly painted than are our native rat- 

 tlers of the Black Hills or Mount 

 Tom. It is large and well filled 

 out and has a keen eye for the 

 stranger, whose approach to .his 

 cage seldom fails to call forth a 

 shrill alarm. It is active, but nat- 

 urally is somewhat cramped in its 

 comparatively small quarters. It 

 has made a few excursions, how- 

 ever; one a while ago to a meeting 

 of the Boston Scientific Society, 

 where he was let loose to crawl 

 about the floor to show his curious 

 oblique method of progression. 

 Dr. Garman does not like, how- 

 ever, to take him into strange 

 places, since a rat hole might af- 

 ford him a safe retreat, and the 

 chances of recovery in good con- 

 dition would be very slight. 



This beast seems to know his 

 captor and makes no effort to 

 strike him with his fangs, allowing 

 himself to be handled with what 

 seems like carelessness, but which 

 is the skill born of long experience. 

 He is more sedate than one of the 

 younger specimens which was here 

 a few years ago, which, while ap- 

 preciating the warmth of Dr. Gar- 

 man's hand and forming a coil up- 

 on it, was greatly incensed at vis- 

 itors, and testified to this by vigor- 

 ous rattling. 



This Missouri specimen has 

 yielded to science quite a number 

 of interesting facts. He has been 

 in his cage so long that it has been 

 possible to follow step by step a 

 number of his changes. It is 

 known positively that he loses his 

 skin twice a year, and that he adds 

 a rattle for every skin. Instead of 

 losing the rattles as he does his 

 skin, they are retained by the clos- 

 ing of the inner end of the old rat- 

 tle over the knob of he new one, 

 and accidents excepted, the snake- 

 bears with him this record of his 

 age. But accidents will happen. 

 Through friction or for some other 

 reason the horn which forms the 

 rattle may become thin, and in 

 such case, the catching of the rat- 

 tle by some obstruction would tear 

 it away. In this very snake some 



holes have now appeared near the 

 base of the first loose rattle, and 

 were the animal free in the woods, 

 there is but little doubt that he 

 might soon become a snake with a 

 single rattle on his tail. 



As to snake bites, Dr. Garman 

 is in position to speak authoritive- 

 ly. He has had a great deal of 

 experience, and has been bitten by 

 all sorts of snakes. Most of them 

 leave simply two little holes not 

 more troublesome than the bite of 

 a cat. The rattlesnake bite is 

 quite different and requires immed- 

 iate attention. The part bitten is 

 relieved of the poison as much as 

 possible by sucking, while the 

 member is constricted by an im- 

 promptu tourniquet, which permits 

 the poison-bearing blood to reach 

 the heart only in mere driblets. 

 And nature does the rest. There 

 is a possibility that if the tooth 

 should penetrate into one of the 

 larger blood vessels, this treatment 

 or an)' other might not be success- 

 ful, but the chances are in its favor. 



One may very readily inquire 

 how it is that such a skillful snake 

 catcher could allow himself to be 

 bitten at all, but this is easily ex- 

 plained. In the instances in which 

 it has occurred the bite was not 

 from the snake that was caught, 

 but from a mate which had not 

 been noticed, but which, disturbed 

 by the capture of its companion, 

 struck at the common enemy. 



But to turn a moment to Dr. 

 Garman's investigation among the 

 fishes, there are a number of points 

 of general interest whose elucida- 

 tion has been due to his persistent 

 research. One of these concerned 

 the artificial hatching of trout. It 

 was found at the fisheries that a 

 very large number of the fry were 

 joined, two and two, like Siamese 

 twins, and so large a number as to 

 very noticeable. This was quite a 

 puzzle to naturalists for a long 

 time, for there was no evidence of 

 its occurring in the brooks and 

 natural hatcheries, and }'et all the 

 features of the hatching seemed 

 precisely the same. 



The female was customarily re- 

 lieved of her eggs by gentle press- 

 ure, and these eggs were made fer- 

 tile in the natural way, but never- 

 theless there was the peculiarity of 

 Siamese twins, triplets and quad- 

 ruplets. Why was it so? 



Dr. Garman came at the solu- 

 tion a number of years ago, and 

 his notion has since been general- 



