COMMON NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES 
345 
will leap wildly from the edge of a rock or a steep 
bank in order to escape. If cornered, it makes 
a fierce but often absurd fight, sometimes be- 
WESTERN COACH-WHIP SNAKE, OR RED RACER. 
coming so frantic that it bites its own body. (R. 
L. Ditmars.) 
This snake is a good climber, swims well, and 
is active and quick in movement, but it has no 
real power to speak of. It is not an enemy of 
the rattlesnake, as many persons suppose, but 
it devours snakes that are smaller and weaker 
than itself. Its favorite food consists of small 
rodents, young birds, eggs and frogs, but it does 
not eat fish. It is a great destroyer of mice and 
moles, and deserves well of the farmer on that 
account. 
The young differ in color from adult specimens, 
being slaty gray, with chestnut-brown saddles on 
the back. In the third year, these colors fade, 
and the snake assumes its adult color. Speak- 
ing generally, the black form of this species oc- 
curs nearly everywhere throughout the United 
States east of the Mississippi into New England. 
What is called the intermediate color is too widely 
scattered to be defined, while the green-and-y el- 
low form is found from Nebraska and Louisiana 
westward to the Pacific coast, and from Puget 
Sound to San Diego. 
The length of this snake, when adult, varies 
from 40 to 58 inches. 
The Coach-Whip Snake 1 is closely related 
1 Za-me'nis fla-gel'lum. 
to the preceding species (both being members of 
the same genus), and has similar habits. It is 
even more slender than the black-snake. Its 
standard color is, toward the head, black or 
light yellowish-brown, fading out rapidly back- 
ward, until the tail becomes nearly white. But 
these colors vary exceedingly in widely separated 
localities. 
This is a southern snake, and extends from 
Florida quite across the continent to California. 
In the far Southwest, its colors are so much suf- 
fused with pinkish it becomes the Red Racer 
( Zamenis flagellum fre-na'tum). 
The Garter-Snake , 2 our oldest and most fa- 
miliar friend among the snakes, is as harmless as 
a house-fly, and any one who exerts himself to 
crush one simply makes a pitiful exhibition of 
ignorance and folly. This is the most prolific 
and generally abundant snake in North America, 
and no amount of persecution seems to diminish 
its numbers to any noticeable degree. During 
the month of March, 1903, about 450 specimens 
were collected in and around the Zoological 
Park. 
This serpent is viviparous, and sometimes 
forty-five are born in one brood. Out of a brood 
of thirty-eight born in our Reptile House, there 
was one double-headed specimen and three albi- 
nos. The standard length of this snake is from 
24 to 30 inches, and one 36 inches long is a large 
specimen. Of the genus to which the Garter- 
Snake belongs, twenty-four species have been 
described, covering the whole of the United 
COMMON GARTER-SNAKE. 
States, and much contiguous territory. From 
the species named above, twelve tiresome sub- 
2 Eu-tae' ni-a sir-tal'is. 
