416 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
{May 21, 4904. 
— 
Snakes of the N. Y. Zoological Park 
(Continued from page 896 ) 
It is not only in the keeping alive of rare and delicate 
snakes that the reptile house has been particularly- 
fortunate. Success has been met as well in the breeding 
of the reptiles. Snakes are divided into two classes : those 
hatched from the egg, and those born alive. Usually those 
that are hatched from eggs are of the harmless variety. 
And here nature has made a wise provision. Harm- 
less snakes multiply at the rate of from forty to eighty- 
five in a year, while the venomous ones seldom arrive 
v^rith more than six to ten in a brood. A young venom- 
ous snake is fully able to care for itself the instant it 
is in the world. Its poison arrives with it, and it needs 
no parental care. 
The fact that young venomous snakes are as danger- 
ous as their parents was accidentally proved in the rep- 
tile house. One of the first brood of snakes to be added 
to the collection was of cotton-mouth moccasins, seven 
in number. As is generally known the moccasin is one 
of the most poisonous of American snakes. Next to 
the cage where the moccasins were born Hved a harm- 
less garter snake. One night the newly arrived moc- 
casins crawled through the fine wire screen that divided 
the two cages. They made themselves at home in their 
new quarters, and when during their run about the 
cage they brushed up against the garter snake, they 
fell on him, bit him, and in an hour he was dead, 
poisoned by the tiny fangs of the little ones, who had 
not been in the world more than two days. One of 
the interesting things about the brood of moccasins was 
their color. The mother was of rich olive, but the 
young ones were rusty red, with tails as yellow as if 
they had been dipped in sulphur. Like all snakes grown 
in captivity, these moccasins, when they are full grown, 
will be especially valuable. Snakes born^ in. captivity 
are more hardy, are easier to handle, and bring forth 
young that are even hardier than themselves, being 
used to the hardships of the cage. 
In the case of these moccasins, the mother takes no 
interest whatever in the brood. To the surprise of 
visitors who make inquiry of the keepers, they learn 
that she has not even once swallowed them to get them 
out of an imaginary danger. And this talk of snakes 
swallowing their young to protect them is, says Curator 
Ditmars, a myth, pure and simple. "Snakes— that is, 
male snakes," said he, "have been known to swallow 
their young, but less to get them out of a danger, real 
or imaginary, than to furnish themselves with a good, 
square meal. This has been proved several times by 
experiences in the reptile house. Of all the snakes that 
were ever swallowed there to get them out of harm s 
way, not one has reappeared up to date." 
Not long ago five chicken snakes descended from 
their cage-tree and began mysterious operations m the 
sand under the water pan in their cage. The- snakes 
were watched closely, and it was found that they had 
scooped a nest in the sand. A few days later twenty- 
seven eggs were found deposited in the moist spot. 
The eggs were of the size of pigeons' eggs, but were 
not covered with a hard shell. In a short time they 
began to grow, becoming bumpy and of the size of 
hen's eggs. The young inside the eggs are provided 
with an "egg tooth," a very sharp and tiny tooth, fas- 
tened to the lower lip. With this they cut their way 
to freedom as soon as they are strong enough to ap- 
pear in public. In the case of the chicken snakes, the 
difference between the young and the old snakes is 
most marked. The adult snake is yellow, with long 
dark brown bands. The young ones are pinkish, but in 
time will assume the colors of the parents. 
A while ago there appeared at the reptile house 
among the snakes intended for the commissary depart- 
ment a freakish brood of youngsters. Out of one batch 
of forty-seven youi>g ones, four were perfect albinos, 
and one was provided with two heads. Seldom has 
anything like these snakes been seen, and great care 
was taken to keep them alive, especially the two- 
headed fellow. He was removed at once from the cage 
with his fellows and given an especial den of his own. 
There he rested on moist blotting paper, and the 
officers of the Zoological Society did everything pos- 
sible to keep life within the precious one. But he re- 
fused to gladden the hearts of the keepers, and one 
morning was found dead. . 
The albinos, snow-white with pink eyes, throve fairly 
well for a long time. In an adjoining cage was a pair 
of copperheads. One night seven young "red adders" 
unexpectedly appeared. Even before the little fellows 
were known to have arrived, they had wriggled 
through the screen separating the cages, and bitten the 
albinos; result, death. 
After snakes have learned to eat, it has been ob- 
served that they take great notice of children who come 
near their cages. They will often watch a child as long 
as it is in sight, and on certain occasions have been 
seen to strike at them through the glass. After thus 
striking, Mr. Ditmars has observed that a salivary 
excretion has been left on the glass, indicating, it would 
seem, that the snake regarded the child as an accept- 
able article of food. They pay no attention, however, 
to grown persons. They seem to choose children as 
being of a more suitable size. 
Snakes of the boa constrictor type are caught by 
the natives of India and South America by means of 
trap nooses. When a snake has been captured, it is 
placed in a zinc-lined box and shipped. Usually the 
ocean voyage occupies from one to four months. 
Throughout this time the snakes receive neither food 
nor water. Coiling himself into as tight a package as 
possible, he take the sea voyage very philosophically. 
If his box be held very securely to the deck he suffers 
no inconvenience. 
On the arrival of a snake at the New York Zoologi- 
cal Garden, Mr. Ditmars has it taken from the box 
and placed in a tank of tepid water. After a bath and 
a long rest, the snake is taken from the water and 
massaged, in order to bring about a re-establishment of 
the natural circulation, which has been in abeyance 
owing to lack of exercise. 
The snake is then rubbed all over with vaseline, re- 
ceiving a vaseline massage regularly for about two 
weeks. If the snake has been shedding his skin, all the 
portions of the old skin are removed. It is very 
essential to the health of a snake that its skin be shed 
periodical]y._ From improper skin shedding snakes 
become subject to various skin diseases. 
Sometimes it is found that these snakes are suffering 
from a species of pneumonia, or congestion of the lungs. 
This is due to change of temperature. Snakes should 
be kept in an even temperature, ranging from 80 to 90 
degrees Fahrenheit; a temperature lower than 70 de- 
grees makes a snake unhealthy. Besides pneumonia 
and skin diseases, snakes are subject to diphtheria. 
Incrustations of a whitish nature form on the back 
of the throat. If these are not treated, the reptile will 
die. All the symptoms point to a form of diphtheria. 
Ihis IS a peculiarity which has been observed by few 
but Mr. Ditmars. 
Though every possible precaution is taken at the New 
York reptile house to prevent the men from being 
bitten by snakes, it occasionally happens that a man 
will receive a nasty bite from a reptile. On these oc- 
casions the patient is given Dr. Albert Calmette's Anti- 
Venine. Ihis peculiar medicine is obtained by in- 
oculating a horse with cobra venom until the animal 
is immune to the poison. 
At first the horse receives a hypodermic injection of 
a fiftieth drop in glycerine. This dose is increased 
until his system is permeated with cobra venom— 
about the deadliest poison known. The blood serum 
of the poison-charged horse then becomes the best 
known antidote for poisonous snake bites. This anti- 
dote is used by the British Government in India as a 
preventive in cobra poisoning. 
As soon as a man has been bitten by a snake a 
ligature should be bound tightly above the affected 
part. Then drainage wounds should be made in the 
vicinity of the bite and below the ligature. This liga- 
ture prevents the poison from getting into the general 
circulation, and the wounds near the bite let out the 
poisoned blood. 
Despite the popular prejudice against reptiles, Mr. 
Ditmars firmly believes that snakes were created to 
serve a useful purpose. He points out their great 
value as destroyers of harmful rodents, bugs and birds, 
and maintains that, were it not for snakes, many por- 
'tions of the globe would be unproductive and unin- 
habitable. 
Short Talks on Taxidermy, 
IV.— Making up the Skin. 
Now take the bird skin in the hollow of your left hand 
and push back first the right and then the left wing, as 
nearly as possible into the position of nature. Turn your 
hand over and place the bird on its breast in your right 
nand, and look at the back. If the feathers do not lie 
smoothly lift them up and let them fall again, and pull 
them a little bit, first toward the bird's head, and then 
toward the tail, always pushing up the wings to a 
natural position. At first you may not succeed in doing 
this very well, but it is a mere matter of practice, and 
you will find that, after handling a few skins, the feathers 
will very easily fall into place. If they do not, you may 
feel very sure that you have filled the skin too full of 
cotton, and that it is so stretched as to make the feathers 
stand on end. When you get the skin right, so that the 
feathers he as they should, be sure you keep it so, and 
place It so that it will dry in that position. 
• '^^1^5 ^ variety of ways of placing a .skin so that 
It will dry well. Perhaps the commonest is to make a lit- 
tle semi-cyhndncal trough of paper, on which the made- 
up SKin is laid, to remain until it is dry. This is an easy 
and trouble-saving way, but its tendency is to make the 
birds back even and round. If you use such little 
troughs it will be well for you to supplement them by 
pushing httle wads of cotton down at the side of the 
neck and at the shoulders, and again under the tips of 
(he wmgs on both sides, so that the skin will have more 
nearly the shape of the dead bird than if it 'dries on a 
srnooth curved surface. Another and better way is to 
take a thin sheet of cotton, place your made-up skin in 
that, and gently lap the cotton over it, first on one side 
and then on the other. If this is properly done the bird 
can be placed on a flat surface to dry, the wings being 
supported by the sheet of cotton. You must remember 
that as you lay the bird away, so it will dry, and as it 
dries, so it will look when the skin is completed. It is 
a good plan to look at your skin from time to time while 
It is drying, and if you see anything going wrong with 
It, and feathers standing up anywhere, you may be able, 
by putting a little compress of cotton over them, to 
hold them down so that they will dry in their proper 
place. 
You must be careful to have the tail flat. It must not 
be allowed to dry in any way askew, but should follow 
the line of the back straight down. If you please, you 
can spread the tail a little bit, but it should not be spread 
too wide, but only enough to show the outer margin of 
the feathers on both sides. 
While in the adult the sex of many species can be 
determined from the plumage, there are others in which 
this affords no certain guide, and many specimens will be 
taken in which it will be absolutely necessary to inspect 
the organs of generation in order to positively determine 
the sex. In the spring, for example, their olumsge tells 
with absolute certainly the sex of the male and female 
bobolink, but in the autumn you must have recourse to 
dissection to determine the question. 
The organs of generation in birds lie close under the 
back bone, and are seen as white or whitish bodies just 
in front of the kidneys. The male organs are spherical 
or oblong, relatively large in the breeding season, but 
smaller in the autumn and winter, and in the young bird 
very small. The ovary lies in the same position, but is 
a single mass in which just before the breeding season 
the different ovules may be detected as spherical yellow- 
ish bodies ranging from the size of a No. 8 shot — in a 
song sparrow — down to very small granules. In the 
young bird the individual eggs in the ovary are often so 
minute that it may be necessary to inspect the mass with 
a pocket lense to detect its character, while the male or- 
gans are also sometimes very inconspicuous. In a bird 
the size of a song sparrow the male organs in the breed- 
ing season are about the size of a pea and quite white. 
It is best always to dissect your specimen and deter- 
mine the sex beyond any question. To do this, cut the 
body of the specimen with your knife from the thigh 
bone forward through the ribs close to the back as far 
forward as to the shoulder, and open the visceral cavity, 
pushing the intestines to one side with the handle of 
your scalpel. When the backbone is thus exposed from 
below,_ you will see the purplish red kidneys lying close 
to it, in front of them the whitish organs of generation, 
and in front of these the lungs, all these organs clinging 
close to the backbone. If you cannot plainly distinguish 
the sex of your bird, take your glass and make a close 
inspection, pushing the organs one way and another with 
the point of your knife. A little care and a little practice 
will enable you to determine the sex every time. The 
sign for male is that of Mars, made thus, 3 ; that for 
female is the sign for Venus, made thus, $ 
The final operation with your skin is to put on it a 
label. This should be a slip of cardboard as small as 
SEX ORGANS, FEMALE. 
possible, provided it is large enough to hold the different 
things you wish to write on it. These should be the 
collector's name, the number of the skin, the locality 
where it was collected, the date, and the sex. There 
may also be a line for the name, though the name of a 
bird is far less important than the place, date, the sex, 
and the collector's name. Anyone can recognize to what 
species the bird belongs, and can himself supply the name, 
but the other data are important. You will do well to 
have a number of these labels, to each of which a thread 
is attached, and the label should be tied to the crossed 
legs of the bird, and rest over the tail. 
This is the simplest mode that I know of for making 
a bird's skin. But it will not answer for certain species, 
such as ducks, woodpeckers, cranes, and a few other 
SEX ORGANS, MALE, 
birds. In these species the neck is so slender that the 
large head will not pass through it, and the bird's skin 
cannot be turned inside out. In some cases, by breaking 
the back of the jaw, where the lower mandible articulates 
with the skull, the head can be slipped over, but it is 
safer not to try experiments of this kind. A better way 
IS to turn the bird as far as possible and then cut off the 
neck, and perform the different operations of cleaning 
the skin. Then, with your knife, make an incision on 
the top of the head, just back of the eye, and cut a median 
sht down over the back of the head and back of the 
neck, and skin down the head on either side until the 
base of the skull appears. Use plenty of cornmeal here, 
for the short feathers of the head must not be soiled or 
moistened by blood. When you have skinned down so 
that the back of the skull appears, pull out the ears and 
skin the sides of the head down to the eyes. By this 
time you can probably pull out the fragment of the neck, 
which may be cut off, the brain removed, and any flesh 
on the inside of the mouth. Then, after having taken 
out the eyes, poisoned the skull, and replaced the eyes 
with cotton, you can sew up the slit you cut, poison the 
whole bird, and go ahead as before. 
In making a skin, the tendency of the beginner is 
always to stretch it. He is likely to make the necks of 
the small birds too long, and still more likely to stretch 
out the necks of his ducks or geese or herons. This is 
especially to be avoided If you should wish to mount 
one of your dried skins at a later day, you can easily 
enough stretch it then, but if you make it too long you 
may be sure that you can never shrink it. In these long- 
necked birds it is not uncommon to stiffen the neck by 
mtroducing a straight stick wrapped wuh cotton or tow 
to just about the size which_ the neck should be. On the 
other hand, some taxidermists put no stiffening in the 
neck of a duck, but turn the neck over, and lay the head 
on its side on the bird's back. Others provide thrmselves 
with wires of various lengths and wrap cotton or tow 
about them, sometimes — in the case of a heron or other 
long-necked bird — bending the neck back, so tiaat it lies 
by the bird's side. 
The material used for filling your skin may be almost 
any vegetable substance. It must not be an animal sub' 
