iS4 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
tSEPt. 8, 190a. 
"Some of the blocks are from the tree old Clark cut 
to cover this house forty-seven years ago," said Sim. 
"I believe they are just about as good now as they 
were then. These first-growth pines are noble trees to 
last." 
"Yes," said Fred Moody, Sim's son; "seems as if 
some of them never would rot. At Wolf Pond we wanted 
to get out some shingles, and we shaved them from an 
old first-growth pine that had fallen so long ago it had 
birch trees growing on it half the bigness of my leg. 
The Northern Adirondack Rairoad cut through a point 
on Wolf Pond Brook, and in the sandy soil and innck 
rhey found trees buried two or three feet under ground 
just as sotmd as they ever were." 
"Tell you what I see up at Corey's," said Sim. "They 
dug a ditch to drain a pond and took from it a balsam 
stick that had been cut by "a beaver. It laid there on the 
cable, and somebody asked me when it was cut. 'Don't 
know,' I said. 'Looks new.' Well, sir, it came from 
under three feet of solid ground." 
"Hardwood jrusts and moulders away," sai'd Fred. 
"Pine and cedar and such wood lasts a long time under 
the right conditions." 
The Horns in the Tree, 
A local newspaper contained an item which seems at 
one time or another to have been printed in half the 
newspapers in the United States relative to the set of 
deer's antlers embedded in an oak tree, which are on 
exhibition in the State Museum at Albany. The item 
sains its point by its explanation that the horns became 
embedded in the tree while on the head of the living 
deer. It cites the familiar fact of deer fighting trees 
and brush to rid their horns of the velvet^ and draws 
the conclusion that this particular deer did the thing a 
little too well, and drove his horns into the young oak 
with such force that he could not extricate them, and so 
perished. 
Sim grunted his disgust at the theory. "Some hunter 
put them_ there after the deer was dead," he said, with 
the positive assurance of a man who knows. "Dave 
Cronk, of Saranac, has a set he cut from a beech tree 
that had been laid up there years before and were covered 
by the solid wood. Didn't you ever notice how when 
the lower limbs drop off the second-growth pines the 
wood covers the nubs? You'd think the trees were 
clear as a whistle til! you came to saw them up, and then 
you found them full of knots. A growing tree covers 
anything it gets a chance to cover, as a matter of self- 
protection. It would cover the ends of those deer horns 
just as it covers an old limb. That's the natural way to 
look at it. Don't need anv fish story to explain the 
fhing." J. B. BuRNHAM. 
Night Witchery on the Lily Pond. 
"WoN^T yoU get some pond lilies?" These words cam«- 
from sweet lips— long since but dust— to the farmer's boy, 
at a time when the pressure of farm work forbade the lass 
of time for what was looked upon by those having 
authority as foolishness. But the wish and the will found 
a way, and so at night the light boat was loaded into 
the wagon, the old torch used on so many night excur- 
sions by brook and river was filled and trimmed, and 
darkness found the boy on the shores of the little pond 
where the lilies grew. A few moments sufficed to unload 
the boat and drag it through the border of tall grass and 
water plants out to the open water; then the torch was 
lighted, the oars put in place and a journey which 
opened up to the boy a new world was begun. 
On one side the familiar meadows of the Agawam 
stretch away into the darkneps ; on the other the hillside, 
covered with trees, rises abruptly to the upland. The 
hlies which through the day are open, are closed at night, 
showing through a jacket of green just a bit of white as 
the light of the torch reaches them. A few strokes of the 
oars sends the boat among the lilypads, and the gathering 
begins, at first just the prosaic picking lilies. But gradu- 
ally the spirit of the darkness, brooding over water and 
meadow and hillside, takes possession, and the boy feels 
as if he were intruding where no mortal had right to 
enter. The air, damp and heavy, is so laden with the 
sweetness of the lilies, that if it were possible one were 
drunk with their perfume. The trees massed against the 
sky take the form, 'here, of men and beasts striving for 
the mastery, there of castle, turret and battlement. The 
ineadows, lighted by thousands of fireflies, reach away 
like a fairyland. The cry of the plover coming clear and 
distinct from the darkness overhead seems like the wail 
of some lost wandering spirit. A little bird, stirring in its 
sleep, gives out a few notes so liquid and sweet that they 
but add to the glamor of the night. The old logs on the 
hillside, glowing with phosphorescent fire, seem like the 
camp-fires of the Spirit Land. The waters of the pond 
withm the circle of the torchlight are as black and pitiless 
as those of the river over which the old Charon ferries 
his unwilling passengers. The boat seems lifted up and 
floating, not_ on water, but upon some liquid between 
water and air. A floating branch brushing against the 
boat seems like hands from some invisible power reach- 
ing up to draw the boatman down to destruction; and 
so when the cry of some stricken wild creature comes 
from the hillside, in very terror the oars, resting in their 
locks, are seized and the boat is sent for shore and 
safety. But a few strokes break the spell of the night- 
time, and with a low laugh at his own fears, the boy re- 
members the beloved and his errand, and the gathering of 
the_ sweet plunder goes on. The night heron, disturbed 
m its fishing, flaps heavily away; the mu.skrat, resenting 
the intrusion of strangers in its domain, disappears in the 
liquid depths; the frogs, with notes of bass and treble, 
keep up the concert of the night, and sometimes the hand, 
reached oiit for the jacket of green and white that holds 
the heart of sweetness, closes unsuspectingly on the 
clammy, squirming wh'te and green jacket of a froggie 
sitting motionless on a lilypad — and with what energy the 
little fellow is sent out into the darkness. But^soon 
enough lilies are gathered to satisfy even the greed of 
the lover, So the boat is sent ashore and the boy, tired 
but happy, goes to home and rest. 
All around us are new worlds if we but have eyes to 
see and ears to hear. Pine Tree. 
Empobta, Kan, 
The Copperhead. 
It is strange and regretable how little true informa- 
tion the general public has about snakes. Careful studies, 
and observations on living individuals, enable me to 
give a good description of the characteristics of the cop- 
perhead, which is in my opinion the handsomest and 
most interesting of our venomous snakes. T shall be well 
pleased if the plain and truthful statement of my experi- 
ences in this line shall give some satisfaction to the 
readers of Forest anti Stream. 
The copperhead, scientifically named Ancislrodon con- 
lortriXj or Agkisfrodon, as it is more recently spelled, be- 
longs to the family of pit-vipers. This latter name is 
derived from a curious, blind depression on the upper 
jaw, between the nostril and the eye on each side of the 
head. It is, according to the size of the individual, from 
one-eighth inch to nearly a half-inch deep. Nobody, as 
yet, has found out in what consists the function of this 
pit. 
The color of the copperhead varies according to locality, 
the condition of soil on which it lives, age, and particularly 
the time before and after sloughing, or, popularly termed, 
shedding. About three or four weeks before this process 
is accomplished the color of the snake becomes dull and 
the markings of the skin nearly, or often completely, dis- 
appear. But as soon as it appears in its new raiment, it 
is like a new being, and is with difficulty to be recognized 
as the same snake as before. 
The coloration does not always correspond with the 
name of the reptile; there are far more specimens clad in 
shades of gray and brown than the really copper-colored 
ones, which are most beautiful. The original of the 
^ Leonhard Stejneger, one of our most prominent author- 
ities concerning the poisonous snakes of North America, 
says:_ "The distribution of the copperhead in a general 
way is co-extensive with that of the banded rattlesnake 
{Cro talus horridus), though as a rule it does not extend 
quite so far north. As a compensation, it goes consider- 
ably further south in the western portion of its range, ex- 
tending into the southern part of Texas." 
From Texas came the two beautiful specimens which I 
have been so fortunate as to observe during an extended 
period of time. Besides man, its worst enemy, the copper- 
head has many others in the animal kingdom which 
work for its destruction. Owls, hawks, weasels, skunks, 
cats and hogs, ,ind, last but not least, several kinds of 
snakes— for instance, the black snake, popularly called 
racer; the king .snake and others— not only kill, but devour 
the venomous reptile.. 
It is therefore wise not to destroy indiscriminately these 
and other harmless species, against which only "people 
afflicted with prejudice or ignorance can wage war. Na- 
ture herself seems to check the increase of this dangerous 
serpent, for it is not very prolific. The female copper- 
head produces, so far as known, only once a year, bear- 
ing from eight to ten young ones, which are born alive. 
This is quite at variance with the accounts of some sensa- 
tional writers, who put the number as high as fifty and 
more. 
I am sorry that I cannot give this handsome reptile 
any other testimony but the worst in regard to its charac- 
ter. In spite of the best treatment, the two snakes de- 
scribed above remained violent, indomitable, vicious to 
a degree, from the day of their arrival to their very end. 
All naturalists, some of them, as for instance, Garman, 
having observed numbers of this kind for years, declare 
unanimously that the copperhead can never be tamed. 
I regret it very much, because the sight alone of these 
gorgeously colored and marked creatures was a treat 
THE COPPERHEAD — PHOTO FROM LIFE BY A. W. 
present illustration is one of these, and if the camera had 
been able to reproduce the color as faithfully as the very 
characteristic markings, there were no need whatever to 
give any further description. This copperhead is of a 
bright terra-cotta color, even with a tint of coral red, par- 
ticularly on the head. The lighter ones of the transverse 
bars are shaded in pink, and almost white, while the dark 
markings in rich chestnut-brown»are in striking contrast 
to the shiny red of the general color. The abdomen is 
of a very pale coral tint with symmetrically disposed dark 
patches at the sides of the ventral scales. Toward the 
tail the pink fades into yellow on the lower side, while 
on the upper the red turns into dark green. 
A second specimen was of an altogether diflferent colora- 
tion, but had identically the same markings. It was of a 
soft ash-gray with a most delicate hue of pink, with al- 
ternating cross bands of nearly milk-white and hazelnut- 
br own. The abdomen was cream-colored. It was a very 
handsome snake too, but not nearly so beautiful as the 
other. 
The exaggerated photographic perspective gives here 
the head of our' reptile far smaller than it is in reality. 
It is rather large in proportion to the body, triangular in 
shape and bearing nine large, lustrous crown plates well 
in front between the tip of the nose and the eyes, over 
which the superciliaries project and give them a peculiarly 
fierce expression. The yellow or reddish eyes have ellip- 
tical pupils, indicating nocturnal habits. The back part 
of the head is covered with small, wart-like scales that 
continue on the conspicuously slender neck, but become 
large and keeled along the body and stand in twenty-three 
rows. There are 150 to 160 abdominal plates; the sub- 
caudals are entire, except the last twelve to eighteen, 
which are divided. The tail is short, conical and ends in 
a curved, pointed horn ; it occupies only one-eighth of the 
length of the body, which scarcely ever exceeds 3 feet in 
full-grown individuals. 
I refrain from giving a description of the working mech- 
anism of the poison apparatus, which is about the 
same as in other snakes of the viperine order; it is a 
topic for itself. But I can say that the venom of our 
reutile is considered less virulent, compared volume for 
volume, than that of the rattlesnake. A bite of either of 
these snakes may cause but little trouble, under some 
circumstances, or may prove absolutely fatal under dif- 
ferent ones. The venom itself is a viscous, greenish-yel- 
low fluid, closely resembling the white of a raw egg. 
As abiding places, the copperhead favors marshes or 
meadows Avith high grass, shrubbery and rocks, where it 
finds^ sufficient shelter and can lurk for its prey, which 
consists of small mammals, chiefly rodents, birds and 
frogs. 
to tne every time I looked at Ihettj, the red specimen 
. in particular. 
The copperhead in all its actions conveys so thoroughly 
the idea of wickedness, of malice, that the superstition 
of those poor people who see in every snakelet the im- 
personation of the evil one may be excused when the 
reptile in question is concerned. 
What magnificent attitudes of challenge and defiance 
the creature assumes when its ire is roused by the slightest 
provocation I How the threatening eye sparkles, the 
tongue darts in rapid succession, the tail quivers with 
excitement! Every nerve and muscle is ready to throw 
forward the back-bent head, mouth open and fangs 
erected, to deal the fatal blow. And yet the snake is 
only on the defensive; it relies upon the terror wliich 
its appearance inspires to keep intruders at bay ; it never 
attacks so long as it remains unmolested, or pursues those 
who retreat in time, whether human being or animal, ex- 
cept when it is hunting for food. Moreoven it is only . 
too glad, after so much display of animostiy, to retire to 
a place of shelter for its own security — a trait characteris- 
tic to most of the dangerous reptiles, wdiich denotes 
cowardice. 
The photograph of this snake was taken under particu- 
larly trying circumstances, with the result of many spoiled 
plates. A badly lighted room, a very refractory subject 
that could scarcely be induced to keep still for a'moment, 
while a time exposure of at least twenty seconds was 
needed, and with no understanding whatever on the part 
of the "sitter" for an artistic arrangement, calculated to 
enhance his beauty, made a complete failure of a first 
attempt. The repeated handling, poking and waving at 
the snake, although most gently done, to get it into 
one of its strikingly characteristic positions, rpused its 
temper to such a degree that in a fit of violent contor- 
tions it fell from the table and struck wildly at every- 
thing used to lift it up again. Finally, in the paroxysm 
of rage, it bit itself twice — once very near the neck and 
once in the middle of the body. From the latter wound, 
distinctly visible punctures, oozed two drops of blood, 
drying soon after. In consideration of the excited state 
of the animal, the hope to obtain a good picture was 
given up for the day, and it was put back in its cage not 
without apprehensions that the self-inflicted wounds might 
have bad consequences. And so it was indeed. Contrary 
to the belief of many — even scientists — that no venomous 
reptile can poison itself or any other of its k'nd, our 
beautiful copperhead soon gave unmistakable signs that 
it was seriously and, as the end proved, fatally affected 
with its own deadly venom. 
It lost first some of its exuberant vitality and on 
the third day after the accident a whitish eruption, simi- 
