4 i^.] 
ST AND STREAM. 
866 
limbed to the ocean swell— that deadly heave which 
J reveals the otherwise well-kept secrets of humanity 
was almost alone with my little friend. He was not 
the least tired, and as he flitted about the forward deck, 
parently findmg things, he took time to confess to me 
at the northwest breeze had carried him too far to lee- 
rd"; but I suspect that he was too good an American 
forego the opportunity ofifered him to see the yacht 
ce. I noted at odd times during the day other land 
-ds fluttermg about the excursion fleet, but was unable 
identify them. 
The migrants have mostly passed, and a great part of 
e bright sunshine of autumn has gone with them 
eadow lark, starling, highhole and robin are doing all 
their power to liven things up, but the woods and the 
ler tangles are dreary. One hears onlv the faint tap of 
hng leaves as they alight in showers upon the crinkled 
nains of their dead companions. 
A.t night a shroud of silent fog wraps all nature; the 
ht air IS from the southeast; I can hear the faint far- 
;ay wail of the siren at Sandy Hook— it must be thick 
, there. I wonder how fares my little white-throated 
low voyager? WiLMOT Townsend. 
AY Ridge, N. Y. 
Beneath Salt Sea Waves. 
East Wakeham, Mass., Oct. 16.— Editor Forest and 
ream: In your issue of Oct. 7 I read the very in- 
«sting communication from Mr. Samuels, entitled, "In 
Seaside Pool." Having handled oysters and clams for 
)re than thirty years, I can say that his observations on 
rfish, conches and borers are borne out by my own 
[perience. By "conch" I suppose he means what we 
5termen call a winkle. He might have added that these 
llfish are provided with a rasp with which they can 
tter away the edges of such shells as may be too strong 
■ them to break; the valves of a bull-nosed quahaug. 
instance, capable of sustaining isolbs. pressure. The 
akle will saw off the shell for three-quarters of an 
h in length, making an aperture through which the 
tim's flesh is slowly drawn, decomposition setting in 
'ore the meal is finished. Often the quahaug in its 
ort to close the shells against intrusion will break them, 
)ecial-ly if any piece of grit is lodged between the 
ves. When the winkle is through, the empty shells 
nain attached by the hinges, and quite widely opened, 
examination Avhere quahaugs grow in any abundance 
1 show that a large percentage are killed by winkles, 
J species of which, with long spirals, inhabit Buzzard's 
y. One of these has a row of points or spurs following 
ones can stand considerable drilling, but persistence makes 
them poor, and finally causes their death. 
The caulker snail is always looking for seams in any 
armor ; throw down a bucket of oysters or quahaugs in 
the water, or near it at low tide, and these little black 
fellows are all over them in a few minutes. If any 
unfortunate has a puncture or crack in its shell the 
caulkers set to work, and slowly, but surely, suck all the 
jmce out, and eventually the flesh. Make ever so slight a 
break in the shell of any species, and unless it can close 
It against leakage it is gone. Oysters escape better on 
quite soft bottoms where they can sink down till only 
their bills show, then they are not disturbed by borers 
or caulkers. Occasionally they settle unevenly, and have 
to build out on one side, their shells assuming a try- 
square shape. In very soft mud they may not be able to 
build up as fast as they settle; in this case they die. 
Sometimes our oysters take in lodgers, a little crab mak- 
ing Its home in their mantles, living altogether inside 
their shells. This crab also lives with other tenants, of 
which more later on. Again the oyster begins life as a 
wanderer; affixed to the back of a spider crab, with 
several of his kind, he leads a romantic existence, until 
the spider sheds his shell; at this time the oysters may 
be as big over as half-dollars, and the crab must ex- 
perience great relief on being rid of these unwelcome 
guests. A worse misfortune overtakes poor spider when 
he unwittingly thrusts one of his sharp toes between the 
valves of an unsuspecting quahaug. These close like a 
vise, and the clam must be pulled out of the sand be- 
fore he can proceed, and the uncomfortable clog hangs 
on till the toe breaks ofif ; before this happens he may pick 
up one or two more, it being no uncommon thing to see 
a spider with three. Angler fish and quahaugs are two 
of nature's steel traps. The first is so by nature, with 
malice aforethought; with the last it is a matter of acci- 
dent confined to the various species of crabs, the spider 
and horseshoe mostly, and occasionally to birds; I have 
rnyself seen a loon killed with a large quahaug impaled on 
his bill. This bird was shot from the deck of a schooner 
as it was swimming along by. It could hardly hold its 
head up enough for breath, and was quite spent. 
The oyster crab before mentioned also lives in the big 
horse clam of the Pacific Coast; a thick bed of these 
shellfish grew in the flats along the shore of North Bay. 
Puget Sound, east of Heron Island. Half of these clams 
had crabs in them, sometimes two crabs to a clam. It 
would seem that tliey must be born in the oyster or clam, 
and do not go and come at will, for once out of an oyster 
they would never get back. However militant crabs may 
be, some of them are chivalrous and will defend a com- 
panion who is unarmored, and run for safety carrying 
the soft-shelled one too. Still, I am much incHned to 
A SUCCESSFUL DEER PHOTOGRAPH. 
Photo by Mr. C. A. Taff . 
convolutions, the other a smooth shell. Some people 
asider them one variety, the first mentioned males, the 
females. My observations point to a different conclu- 
)n. During the latter part of summer the females 
iwn ; they produce a tough, leathery string, about 2ft. 
ig, on one edge of which are thickly grafted little 
uches, about the size of a silver quarter, and three- 
:teenths of an inch deep. These are filled with a trans- 
rent jelly, in which may be seen the germs of future 
nkles. On the outer edge of each pocket is a semi-oval 
3t of thinner material, through which the young eyentu- 
y make their escape. One end of the string is an- 
ored in the bottom to a depth of 6in. or more; on this 
rtion the pouches are wider apart and not fully de- 
loped. The spawn is usually placed where the tide _will 
t leave it dry, and is white at first, changing to yel- 
vish and brown. 
The oystermen pull up all they find to prevent their 
Dwing. When boys, we used to pinch the pockets with 
r fingers till the outlet burst and their contents escaped. 
All of this string of pouches is produced inside the 
nkle's body, and can be withdrawn by a pull; then it 
II be found completed up to the end, with no unfinished 
ckets on the string. When this is done I do not think 
e can pick up the work again, but probably could make 
new one. 
The borer makes a cluster of little pockets like melon 
£ds placed in the shells of oysters and clams, or under 
elving stones, with toadfishes for neighbors. The 
rer destroys innumerable small oysters. The large 
think that this service is only rendered by the male crabs 
to those of the gentler sex, in the performance of certain 
ofiices of nature which an armored condition would pre- 
clude. 
Mr. Samuels' anemones remind me of some flowers I 
once saw protruding from their serpentine shells attached 
to a partially sunken log. I was shooting wild ducks on 
a tiny lagoon that made in from Puget Sound, and was 
using this log for a blind, liaving piled up some boughs, 
behind which my gunning boat was hauled. This little 
lagoon, or "squim," was shaped like a triangle, the apex 
of which ran back into the high timber; the front was 
shut off from the Sound by a beach over which the 
birds came. I was up in the apex where it was shaded by 
the giant firs; the water was 3 or 4ft. deep, and the log 
was propped off the bottom by its broken limbs. 
The shooting was slow, and during an interval my 
attention was caught by what appeared to be several pink 
and white flowers growing below the surface. On ex- 
amination I could see that they grew out of a shell about 
as large as a lead pencil, which was plastered on to the 
bark of the tree. On thrusting my wiping stick down 
they quickly withdrew, being alarmed at the least agita- 
tion. After a bit they would come out again. They were 
very bright colored and pretty: arnong them were a num- 
ber of jelty-like masses fastened to the log by one end; 
they were about lin. in diameter and 2in. long, very 
diaphanous, and while evidently alive, were more like 
fungoids than animals. They had a perceptible organism, 
however. 
Although I watched these curiosities so intently that 
several widgeon and bluebills came to my decoys and 
got off w;ithout harm, I did not see them catch any food. 
A siniilar misleading appearance is presented by the 
foliage-like cilia on the end of a goduck's snout, which 
looks like a bunch of leaves growing on the bottom; a 
slight disturbance will cause these to disappear. The 
body of this clam iji out of proportion to its shells, which 
are fluted like a pecten's, but not so decided; the wonder 
of it lies in its rubber neck, which is sometimes 2ft. 
long. Specimens of this shellfish weighing i61bs. have 
been dug, but they affect hard clay banks, where one has 
to use a pick and bar to mine fop them ; again, they will 
be found in water sand and can only be come at by sink- 
ing a pipe around them and exhausting its contents. 
However caught, they are very good eating. 
Walter B. Savary. 
The Horn Snake. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Now comes Mr. Eliot Norton and stirs up the sting- 
ing snake myth again, affording another opportunity to 
the "snake editor" to lay a ghost that hath oft been laid 
before. This necessitates a repetition of the exorcism 
that was set forth by the writer several years ago in 
Forest and Stream. 
Mr. Norton has found a number of intelligent and hon- . 
est people who firmly believe in stinging snakes— having 
seen them with their own eyes, etc. I have had exactly 
the same experience. When investigating the subject of 
stinging snakes — their existence or non-existence— I 
found that several highly intelligent and highly educated 
gentlemen of my acquaintance treated the question as not 
debatable, as they themselves had seen numerous specie 
mens of the stinging snake— had seen them perform their 
peculiar antics, and, especially, all had seen the sting 
Itself repeatedly thrust out at the end of the tail. All of 
which leads to the conclusion that the human mind has 
an instinctive prOneness to overcredulity regarding 
snakes, their functions and attributes. The word "in- 
stinctive" is used advisedly. 
Throughout the whole domain of animated nature the 
snake is regarded as par excellence the enemy of man. 
This feeling is dpubtlcss an inherited instinct, that sur- 
vives from a very remote period in the mutual 
relations of man and snake, when the former was 
comparatively defenseless against the latter, and when 
the serpent probably constituted man's most for- 
midable enemy. Hence arose the prevailing dis- 
position on the part of humanity in general, and espe- 
cially the more ignorant, to destroy all snakes indiscrim- 
inately, large and small, venomous and non-venomous, 
with a superstitious vindictiveness. This instinctive aver- 
sion to the serpent tribe is a strong argument for the the- 
ory that the human race originated in a warm climate, 
where snakes do most abound. The common attitude of 
the human family toward the snake tribe is one of aloof- 
ness — to avoid any sort of contact — to keep at a safe dis- 
tance — with the natural result of what may be caUed "will- 
ful ignorance," and an indiscriminate condemnation of 
the whole tribe. The usual source of information about 
snakes is therefore "hearsay evidence" embellished by 
luxuriant imaginations. 
But to return to the particular subject in hand. The 
writer, after much diligent effort, secured two specimens 
of the much-dreaded "stinging snake," one nearly dead 
but still able to wriggle his tail in a lively manner, while 
the other was very much alive. ., These specimens were 
recognized without hesitation- by all the experts as being 
the genuine article. ^ ' > 
Upon the first hasty examination of- the wriggling tail 
of the half-dead specimen, I could almost have sworn 
that I saw the sting, quickly thrust out and withdrawn, 
thus showing the influence of mental predisposition or 
credulity. 
It is perhaps needless to add that the snake had no 
sting, no semblance of a sting, and no place in his anat- 
omy to accommodate such a weapon. 
The live specimen was kept as a pet, and a subject of 
study, for about six weeks and then released. He was 
found to be exceptionally passive and absolutely inoffen- 
sive. When carrying this snake on my arm through the 
village to set him at liberty at the river's margin, I en- 
countered a man who was a stranger to me, who showed 
a great deal of excitement at sight of the snake. He 
danced about and exclaimed, "Why, man, that's a sting- 
ing snake! If it pops its sting in you it will kiU you!" 
etc.. etc. He told me in a very animated manner that he 
had seen one of those snakes thrust its tail through a 
cypress board. Now here was very direct evidence of a- 
most concrete sort of the peculiar endowments of the 
"stinging snake," and from an "eye witness." When I^. 
had succeeded in convincing him by ocular demonstra- 
tion, and much against his will, that the snake had- no 
sting, and was otherwise harmless, he admitted that-the 
snake he had seen with its tail thrust through a board was '.. 
dead when he saw it and tliat the board was : split; but -he' 
was told that it had thrust its tail through the board, etc. 
An investigation of the habits of the so-called stinging 
snake indicated that its food consisted (probably wholly 
consisted) of animals whose habitat is soft mud and ooze, 
such as mud eels, newts, etc. The specimen under, my 
observation showed a marked disposition to burrow its 
head down into mud and to conceal its head in any situa- .■ 
tion when disturbed, at the same time showing considera-. 
ble agility in the movements of its tail. When released 
in the edge of the water, instead of swimming away, it 
burrowed through the soft mud and so went out of sight. 
An acquaintance informed me that he had discovered one 
of these snakes with a large eel in its mouth. 
It is possible that in seizing its prey and withdrawing its 
victims from the mud its tail is used to "get a purchase" 
on root or snag to aid in the operation. At all events, 
the disposition to burrow downward, accompanied by 
adroitness in the tail movements, is probably the sole, 
foundation of the stinging snake myth. 
Coahoma. 
Mississippi. 
HoLYOKE, Mass., Oct. 21. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
Your correspondent's inquiry in current issue of Forest 
AND Stream concerning a snake that stings with its 
tail is worthy of more than passing notice, considering 
