1875 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
1L1 
do not g© of their own accord. After about six 
weeks they will get nearly all their living in the 
fields and woods. If fed regularly at night they 
will come home early and go to roost. They should 
be seen and counted every night upon the roost. 
Particular attention in these small things is gener¬ 
ally the measure of success in turkey-raising. 
- — .O' m - 
About Snake’s Eggs. 
BY PROP. O. BROWN GOODE. 
Mr. J. C. Christian, of Huntington, Ind., writes: 
u I have several times killed water snakes, which, 
when opened, contained upwards of twenty good 
sized young snakes, from six to seven inches long. 
Last summer, after pulling out a large stump, we 
found twenty-seven eggs, which we broke, finding 
in each a well developed young snake about nine 
inches long ; afterwards we found and killed two 
snakes near the same place, about four feet long, 
and resembling the snakes in the eggs, and I sup¬ 
posed they, deposited the eggs. I am satisfied that 
some snakes bring forth their young alive, while 
others lay eggs. Now is there any other class of 
animals which have more than one way of repro¬ 
ducing their young.” 
Mr. Christian has determined for himself a fact 
which has long been known to naturalists. Some 
snakes do lay eggs, while others give birth to living 
young, yet the difference is not so great as it may 
at first appear. We all know that every animal, in 
Its earliest stages of development's enclosed with¬ 
in the walls of an egg. That- all life is produced 
from eggs, “ Omne vivum ex ovo”, is an adage 
handed down from the earliest times, and modem 
investigations have confirmed its truth. 
Animals are either viviparous, oviparous, or ovo- 
viviparous. The first class includes all the highest 
animals, the mammals , or those which suckle their 
young ; and in these the young animal derives its 
nourishment from the system of its parent, until 
it is strong enough for an independent life. In the 
other two classes, which ought really to be con¬ 
sidered as one, the young animal is walled up at an 
early period withiu the outer coverings of the egg, 
and as it is now entirely separated from the paren¬ 
tal system, it is nourished by a supply of nutritious 
material stored up within the egg, and which we 
call the yolk. When the young animal is sufficient¬ 
ly grown to care for itself, and the yolk of the egg 
is all used, it bursts the envelope of the egg, and 
is born. To this class belong birds, reptiles, 
batrachians (frogs, toads, etc.), fishes, insects, 
crustaceans (crabs and lobsters), worms, mollusks, 
and all the lower animals. Oviparous animals are 
those which “ lay ” their eggs to be hatched by the 
warmth of the parent’s body, as in most birds ; by 
the warmth or the soil or sun, as in reptiles ; or by 
the warmth of the water, as in fishes. Ovo-vivipar- 
ous animals, are those which do not lay their eggs, 
but retain them until the envelopes are broken, so 
that the young are born alive. The casual observer 
would be very likely to call these viviparous, but a 
study of their anatomy shows us that they are very 
close to the ovipara ; in fact, the only difference is 
this, that the egg is delayed a little longer in the 
former, so that it is hatched just before it is laid. 
This point established, it is not very hard to com¬ 
prehend how it is “that some snakes bring forth 
their young alive, while others lay eggs.” I know 
of a case where one of our common striped snakes 
(.Eutaenia sirtalis) was kept in confinement, and 
having no satisfactory place in which to lay its eggs, 
retained them until after they were hatched, thus 
giving birth to its young alive. The same thing 
has been known to occur in the common English 
lizard, ( Lacerta agilis), which is also usually ovipar¬ 
ous. We find the same thing in other groups of 
animals ; thu3 many of the sharks and skates of 
our sea coast, are oviparous, while others bring 
forth their young alive. The minnows ( Cyprino- 
dentidce) of our brooks, show the same differences 
of habits, and parallel cases occur among frogs, 
snails, insects, and worms. 
I can not state which of our species of snakes 
are oviparous or ovo^viviparous, for the very good 
reason that nobody knows. It is possible for the 
readers of the Agriculturist to make some very inter¬ 
esting contributions to science, by telling what they 
have seen. The breeding habits of most of the 
reptiles of North America are totally unknown. We 
know that the Rattlesnakes, the Copperheads, the 
Massaugas, the Mocassons, and some of the water 
snakes are usually ovo-viviparous, and that the 
Smooth Blacksnake, {Bascanianconstrictor), the Milk 
or House-snakes, (different species of Ophibolus), 
some of the Bull-snakes, (species of Pityophis), the 
Grass-snake, ( Liopeltis vernulis), and one or two 
other kinds, are usually oviparous, but of three- 
fourths of our snakes we know absolutely nothing. 
It is probable that the young water snakes which 
Mr. Christian found inside of the larger ones, had 
been swallowed for temporary protection, and 
would soon have crawled out of their parent’s 
mouth, had they not been prevented. The new-born 
w^ter snake-is not so long as six or seven inches. 
IA year or two ago, the readers of the Agricultur¬ 
ist contributed a great mass of evidence, which 
went far to settle the question, “ Do snakes swallow 
their young? ” Every farmer, and every farmer’s 
boy, and frequently the girls, can do something to 
add to the general stock of knowledge, and would 
be glad to do so if they only knew how. In this 
article Prof. Goode tells us one thing that they can 
do—to observe the manner in which snakes repro¬ 
duce, and other methods will be pointed out in due 
time. To be very useful to science, one needs only 
a good pair of eyes, and a determination to use 
them. Record only what is seen, but do not see a 
part, and infer how the rest may be. The books 
are full of inaccurate observations, made by per¬ 
sons who tell more than they see. While we expect 
aid from those who can make observations in the 
field, we, on the other hand, would like to aid them, 
and if they come across things in regard to animals 
of all kinds, or plants, that they would like to have 
explained, they must send us their questions. Ed.] 
Manure from the Sea—Fish-Scrap. 
The Menhaden Oil and Guano Company report 
50,976 tons of scrap made in the whole country 
last season. This we believe is a larger product 
than was ever made upon our coast in any one 
year. It took to make this quantity of manure 
1,474,638 barrels of fish. Reckoning 200 fish to the 
barrel, this would give 294,927,600 as the annual 
catch of bony fish. The number of fishermen em¬ 
ployed is 1,567; the number of persons em¬ 
ployed in the manufacture, 871; vessels engaged 
in the business, 283; steamers, 25; factories, 
64; amount of capital invested, $2,500,000. The 
oil extracted from the fish was 3,372,837 gal¬ 
lons—worth about a million and a half of dollars. 
The scrap at the factories is worth about 13 dollars 
a ton, making over $600,000, or $2,100,000 as the 
annual return for the Menhaden fishery. About 
30,000 tons of Peruvian guano are annually used in 
this countrv, for which fish-scrap is the best sub¬ 
stitute. The ammoniated superphosphates draw 
their ammonia very largely from fish-scrap. Not¬ 
withstanding this immense slaughter of the Men¬ 
haden every year, there seems to be no appreciable 
diminution of their numbers. It is but as a drop 
in the bucket in comparison with the destruction 
wrought among them by sharks and other voraci¬ 
ous fishes. This wealth drawn from the sea by the 
Menhaden fishery furnishes us with one of our 
most valuable fertilizers. Thus the waste of our 
farms carried off by every stream that runs to the 
sea is in this manner partially restored. 
Field Beans. —The bean crop is worthy of a place 
in a rotation, not only for its profit, but for its influ¬ 
ence upon the soil. It takes little from the soil; is 
a cleaning crop ; requires little outlay for seed, oc¬ 
cupies the ground but a short time, and may follow 
a crop of clover the same season, if an early ripen¬ 
ing variety is chosen. The “ Medium ” ripens 
early, is hardy, but sells at a lower price than the 
“ Marrow.” The “ Marrow ” is very productive on 
a good soil, and is a popular market variety. If 
properly harvested, the haulm is much relished by 
sheep, and is nutritious. The bean when ground 
with corn or oats, is readily eaten, and when cooked 
pigs will accept it with avidity. No food is bettei 
for a growing animal, nor contains more flesh¬ 
forming elements than this bean. The idea, how¬ 
ever, that beans may be grown with profit upon 
a soil too poor for any other crop, is erroneous. 
Practice and Science Agree. 
BY PROFESSOR ASA GRAY. 
Sometimes practice and science seem to be at va¬ 
riance, but after a while they make it up and come 
to a good understanding. Practice has always said 
that vegetable mold was a good thing to have in 
the soil, and that somehow or other plants obtain 
a great deal of nitrogenous nourishment from it. 
The proof of it was in the crops. The gardener 
thought the same, and his pot plants gave convinc¬ 
ing evidence of it. He has gone on, saving his 
leaf-mold, and gathering it where he could, and 
putting his plants in it all the same, while the chem¬ 
ists were proving to their satisfaction that humus 
did not amount to much, and even have “ seem¬ 
ed to prove that a fertile garden soil has little, 
if any, more power than so much sand to supply 
plants with nitrogen.” They could not find that the 
combined nitrogen ever got into the form of am¬ 
monia or nitrates. At last it has occurred to one 
of the chemists, of a practical turn of mind, to test 
the matter by growing plants in pots, in the gar¬ 
dener’s way, supplying them with different quanti¬ 
ties of vegetable mold, and withholding it from 
others of the same sorts, and then chemically ana- 
lizing the plant to see what it had got. This has 
been done by Prof. Storer, and a full account of the 
result will be found in the last (third) part of the 
Bulletin of the Bussey Institution. It comes out 
clear that plants do get a deal of nitrogenous food 
from vegetable mold, just as the practical people 
thought; although how it comes about still puz¬ 
zles the chemists. An important paper by Mr. 
Armsby, of the Sheffield School, discussed last 
summer at the Hartford meeting of the American 
Association, comes to the same upshot, finds the 
gain unequivocal, but yet cannot trace it into the 
form either of nitric acid or ammonia. Of course, 
vegetable mold will not do everything, and good 
farming can be carried on without it, when artifi¬ 
cial fertilizers can be had, and its powers may 
sometimes be greatly enhanced by the proper ad¬ 
ditions. But vegetable mold, especially in cool 
climates, where it most accumulates, and where 
also it is more useful than in warm climates, is a 
store that nature has been an immense while in 
gathering, and which it costs nothing to use. Now, 
after hearing it depreciated by the chemists of late 
years, it is pleasant to see one of them come to the 
conclusion : “ There can be little doubt that, for 
the present support of agricultural crops, the vast 
stores of vegetable mold that have accumulated 
in the soil through the decay of many generations 
of plants, constitute a more abundant and more 
important source of nitrogenized plant-food than 
any other.” 
The Arizona Quail—Gambel’s Partridge. 
There are three plumed quads, or partridges as 
some call them, in our territory between the 
Pacific and the high table lands of Western Texas : 
the Mountain Quail of California, which has a 
crest of two slender feathers pointing backwards, 
(Oreortyx) ; the Valley Quail of Southern Califor¬ 
nia, and the Arizona Quail; the last two have a 
crest of several feathers, curved forward, and be¬ 
long to a different genus, Lophortyx. The Arizona 
species having been discovered in 1841, by Dr. 
Gambel, it is named in his honor L. Gambeli. The 
first introduction of these birds into the collection 
of the Zoological Society, London, some two years 
ago, made a great sensation among naturalists, and 
they were very carefully figured by the Field, in 
an engraving, a portion of which we use. The 
bird is about the bulk of the common quail of the 
eastern states, but is longer. The male has the 
chin and throat jet-black, bordered with a sharp 
white line; there is along the sides of the crown 
