The Poisonous Snakes of Texas. 
25 
plish black bars one or two scales wide. Of these, sometimes two con- 
tiguous to each other on the same side are united above into an arch, 
inclosing a space, the center of which is rather duskier than the ground 
color; at others corresponding bars from the opposite side unite and 
iorm half-rings encircling the body. Sometimes there is a lighter shade 
bordering the dark bars. Beneath, black, blotched with yellow white. 
N umber of ventrals (gastrosteges), one hundred and thirty to one hun- 
dred and forty-five; of subcaudals (urostegesi), thirty-nine to forty-five, 
of which divided, 0 to &1.” (Stejneger, “Poisonous Snakes of North 
America.”) 
The above description is all right for young snakes, but when they get 
aged, the colors fade, and the general appearance is dark, rough, and 
rusty ; and I have seen specimens that were quite black. 
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 
All Texas, wherever moisture abounds. 
HABITS. 
The “Cotton-mouth” lives on the margins of streams, lakes, ponds, 
and in marshy and wet places ; I have found them in places on the prairie 
where water 'stood only a few months of the year ; digging post holes for 
a line of fence through such a place I found a fine specimen in a craw- 
fish hole two feet below the surface; the ground was damp w'here it was, 
but the surface had been dry for a month. They are sluggish, and when 
alarmed generally make towards the water, but often towards brush or 
grass for protection. Their principal food is frogs, for which they lie 
in wait. Doctor Cope says (An. Rep. Smith. Inst., 1898, p. 1135), 
“They catch fish with ease.” They have a habit of throwing their 
mouths open when danger threatens, and holding it open until the dan- 
ger passes. The interior of the mouth is white, hence the name of “Cot- 
ton-mouth.” 
The Cotton-mouth gestates its young iu the two horns of the uterus; 
in this species each young one being wrapped in a separate covering and 
separated from, the others by a constriction of the uterus, the same as in 
animals that bear litters of young. The number of young produced at a 
birth is from two to twelve. The number is small, compared to the pro- 
ductiveness of their harmless cousin, Natrix fasciatus , which is often 
mistaken for A. piscivorus, and which brings forth from twenty-five to 
fifty young at a birth. Tropidonotus Clarhii , another harmless cousin of 
A. piscivorus , inhabiting the salt marshes along the Texas coast gestates 
in the same manner as A. piscivorus. 
