88 
RURAL HOURS. 
nearest fields and groves, and you shall see there a thousand sweet 
plants, sowed by the gracious hand of Providence, blooming amid 
the common grass, in crevices of rude rocks, beside the trickling 
springs, upon rough and shaggy banks, with a freedom and a 
simple modest grace which must ever be the despair of gardeners, 
since it is quite inimitable by art, with all its cunning. ' 
Saturdatj, 2Qth . — Charming day ; walked in the woods. Acci- 
dentally breaking away a piece of decayed wood from the dead 
trunk of a tree, we found a snake coiled within ; it seemed to 
be torpid, for it did not move ; we did, however — retreating at 
once, not caring to make a nearer acquaintance with the creature. 
Tliere are not many snakes in the neighborhood ; one seldom 
sees them either in the fields or the woods, though occasionally 
they cross our path. The most common are the hai-mless little 
garter snakes, Avith now and then a black-snake. Not long since, 
the workmen at the Cliffs were making a road, and two of them 
taking up a log to move it, a large black-snake, astonished to 
find his dwelling in motion, came Inu'rying out ; he was said to 
have been three or four feet in length. But I have never yet 
heard of any pei-sons being injured by a snake in this neighbor- 
hood ; most of these creatures are quite harmless— indeed, of the 
sixteen varieties found in the State, only two are venomous, the 
copper-head and the rattlesnake. 
There is a mountain in the county, the Crumhoni, where rat- 
tlesnakes formerly abounded, and where they are said to be still 
found, but fortunately, these dangerous reptiles are of a very 
sluggish nature, and seldom stray from the particular locality 
which suits their habits, and where they are generally very nu- 
merous. An instance is on record, quoted by Dr. De Kay, in 
