24 
Transactions Texas Academy of Science. 
home, and placed it in a vessel, and watched it disgorge a fair sized 
“Checked Pilot” snake, Coluber obsoletus , which was still alive, and was 
about three inches longer than the Elaps which had swallowed it. I 
have never found a female bearing eggs or young, and I know nothing 
of their breeding habits, and have found no literature throwing light on 
this subject. 
ANCISTRODON PISCIVORUS, Lacepede. 
(“Cotton-mouth” or “Water Moccasin.”) 
Plate II. 
DESCRIPTION. 
“No loreal. Inferior wall of orbit constituted by third labial; twenty 
dorsal rows. Dark chestnut-brown, with indistinct vertical dark bars. 
Line from superciliary along the edge of the head, through the middle of 
the second supralabial row. A second line, from the lowest point of the 
orbit, parallel to the first. Scales all large and well developed ; those on 
side and back of head conspicuously so. Two nasal plates, with the 
nostrils between them. Anterior orbitals two, one above the other, the 
upper extending from the eye to the posterior nasal, the lower linear 
and forming the upper wall of the pit. Lower and posterior wall of 
pit constituted by a narrow plate resting along the third labial and 
terminating on the second. Third labial very large, constituting the 
inferior wall of the orbit, of which three scales form the posterior. 
Upper labials eight, very large and broad; lower ten. Occipitals (parie- 
tals) terminated each by a triangular plate. All the scales on the back 
of -the head carinated. Dorsal scales all carinated. 
“General color, dark chestnut-brown with darker markings. Head 
above, purplish black. An obsolete chestnut-brown streak passes from 
the posterior end of the superciliary along the upper edge of the head 
through the middle of the second row of supralabial scales. A narrow 
yellowish-white line passes from the third labial, or begins just below 
the lowest part of the orbit, and passing backward parallel with the first 
stripe, crosses the angle of the mouth at the seventh labial and meets the 
first stripe on the side of the throat. • On the lower labials are 
three short, nearly vertical light bars on fourth, sixth and seventh; the 
rest of the jaw itself, as well as the interval between the stripes on the 
sides of the head, dark purplish-brown, of which color is also the space 
in front and below the eyes. General color above, dull dark chestnut- 
brown. On each side a series of twenty or thirty narrow vertical pur- 
