1052 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 31, 1910. 
were very small, and some which were bird¬ 
like in character. 
The time when these Triassic rocks and 
those deposited next after them were laid 
down is to 11s a most interesting period in the 
earth’s history. It was in the rocks that the 
earliest known birds were discovered, and still 
more interesting the first small and very 
generalized mammals. These mammals are 
found abundantly in the period known as the 
Jurassic, which immediately followed the Tri¬ 
assic. The Jurassic bird, from the lithographic 
slates of Solenhofen, had a long vertebrated 
tail, to each side of which long feathers were 
attached, and also, as discovered by the late 
Prof. Marsh, had teeth set in sockets in its 
jaws, just as have the reptiles. Some creta¬ 
ceous birds were also toothed. 
Little or nothing is as yet known about this 
specimen which has recently come to the 
American Museum from the Jersey shore. It 
is buried in a great mass of rock, in which its 
bones show in only a few places. All this 
rock will have to be chiseled away, and when 
the bones are finally exposed, the paleontolo¬ 
gists of the museum will be able to tell what 
are its relationships with others of these 
ancient animals. 
The discovery is one of great interest and 
importance. The quarries of Portland, Conn., 
many years ago yielded a small dinosaur about 
the size of a large dog, but bones of any kind 
are exceedingly rare in these sandstones of 
New England. 
Blacksnake and Swallows. 
High up on one of the hills overlooking the 
beautiful Saugatuck River Valley, there is an 
old farm house, surrounded by orchard and 
meadow, pasture and woodland, and nearly a 
mile from the nearest house. It belongs to a 
friend who knows birds, and together we have 
had rare pleasure studying the bird life of the 
farm. He has been away from the farm for 
about ten years, going back in summer for a 
vacation. He spent the whole of the past 
summer there, and I often visited him. 
In this way I noticed the following incident: 
The outbuildings and barns are admirably 
adapted for the nests of barn swallows, and 
when he left the farm ten years ago, there 
was a goodly colony of them nesting on the 
place, and he tells me that there had always 
been numbers of them on the place. 
During the past ten years the swallows 
have decreased, while the nesting sites have, 
if anything, increased, and there are no cats 
on the place. Last spring there was only one 
swallow’s rjest on the farm and that was 
placed in a most inaccessible situation in the 
peak of the rafters in the big barn, twenty- 
six feet from the barn floor. 
One morning in June, I was with my friend 
and his son in the barn, and was watching the 
old swallows darting in at the open door and 
feeding the half-grown young birds in the 
nest. 
As I looked, I saw the head of a snake move 
across a beam, and then part of the body, and 
then it disappeared under a board that had 
been nailed over a rotted spot in the beam. 
I climbed to the beam and pried off the 
board and poked out the snake, which lay 
hidden in a mass of fine hay—evidently a 
mouse nest. The snake, which was a black- 
snake, of the white-throat racer variety, came 
out of the nest and dropped to the barn 
floor, sixteen feet below, and disappeared. 
I said that the snake was after the young 
birds, but my friend said no, that the snake 
was hunting mice, and that it was his pet 
snake that he had seen around all the spring. 
I was unconvinced, and showed him how the 
snake could easily' climb the rest of the way 
to the nest. 
Two days later my friend and his son were 
in the barn and heard a commotion among the 
swallows, and looked up and saw the snake, 
or a similar snake — I shall believe it was the 
same one — wrapped about the swallows’ nest 
and with one of the young swallows in his 
mouth. He shot the snake, and it dropped to 
the barn floor with the young bird still in its 
mouth, but dead. 
He told me of this, and later showed me 
where the snake had shed his skin among the 
rafters, which I photographed from the top of 
the hay' mow, without disturbing it in any way. 
The skin is still there, twenty-one feet from 
the barn floor, and tells mutely how its owner 
climbed to the swallows’ nest. Passing be¬ 
tween two roof boards, the snake reached up 
the height of the roof board, and passed back 
of the rafter in the space between the rafter 
and the shingles, and continuing in this way, 
it was easy to go anywhere it wished. The 
photograph tells the story. 
We had noticed that the blacksnakes had 
increased about the place, and were often 
seen, and I am satisfied that it was the black- 
snakes that had wiped out the entire colony 
of swallows on the place. 
Two days after, another blacksnake was 
found in an apple tree trying to get the young 
from a chipping sparrow’s nest, but the young 
were ready to fly and went from the nest be¬ 
fore the snake could get any of them. 
W. F. S. 
Here is an Indian story told me years ago by 
an aged Cheyenne warrior as we sat in the 
sun below a high rocky bluff on the Rosebud 
River in Montana, and watched the swallows 
hawking about in pursuit of their prey. Old 
Shell said to me: “'You see those little birds? 
1 will tell you a story' about them—something 
that my father told me: 
“A long time ago my father was out walk¬ 
ing in the hills, and came to a high cut cliff. 
The face of the cliff was broken, and hung 
over a little, and it was covere 1 with the 
mud nests of swallows. It was about hatch¬ 
ing time in the spring, and the swallows were 
flying about, gathering food and bringing it 
to their little ones. They were thick about 
the nests, and made a great noise. He sat 
there and watched them for a time. 
"Pretty soon he saw birds gathering about 
a particular place on the cliff and making a 
great noise, and when he looked carefully he 
saw a great bullsnake crawling along on a 
ledge, and when the snake came to a group of 
nests it raised its head and thrust it into one 
nest after another and ate the yoking birds. 
The swallows kept flying at it, but they could 
not stop it. 
All at once the birds gathered together and 
flew in a great throng toward the rising sun 
[east]. None were left about the nests. While 
my' father sat there, wondering why they had 
gone away, he saw the swallows coming back 
in a thick flock, and leading them was a swift 
hawk, which he could hear whistle every now 
and then as it flew. The birds came on, and 
when they were near to the cliff, the hawk 
whistled loud. When the hawk did that the 
snake raised its head and turned it toward the 
hawk, and the hawk turned aside and flew by 
the snake, and away, out of sight. When the, 
hawk turned aside and flew around the snake, 
the swallows made a great noise and fol¬ 
lowed the hawk, as it flew away, calling as if 
begging it to come back. So all the birds 
flew over the hill out of sight; but my father 
sat there waiting to see what would happen. 
"Soon he saw the swallows come back over 
the hill a second time, and now the bird lead¬ 
ing them was a bald eagle; and as it flew it 
whistled as eagles do. When the eagle drew 
near to the cliff the snake raised its head and 
looked at the eagle, and when the snake looked 
the eagle seemed to be afraid, and it turned 
and flew out of sight, the swallows following 
it and making still more noise. 
“The third time the birds came back over the 
hills a gray eagle led them, and as it drew 
near, it sounded its whistle, as the bald eagle 
had done. The gray eagle came on, flying 
swiftly, but when the snake raised its head 
and looked at the eagle, it seemed as if a 
flash flew from the snake’s eyes; and the gray 
eagle made the same turn as the others had 
done, and flew away out of sight, and all the 
swallows made a mournful noise. 
“The gray eagle flew out of sight down the 
creek, and the swallows followed it, and were 
gone a long time. Pretty soon, though, they 
could be seen coming back, just like a black 
mass, and this time their leader was a heron. 
When the heron drew near the side of the 
cliff, the snake raised its head and looked at 
the bird, and it seemed as if blue sparks of 
fire flew from its head. The heron did not 
turn aside from the snake when it raised its 
head, but flew straight on, and when it had 
come close to the snake the heron ran its bill 
clear through the snake, and it fell to the 
ground and died. And the swallows gathered 
around the snake in masses, and trampled all 
over it. 
“Thus the swallows tried to save their 
children.” G. B. G. 
New York Zoological Society Meeting. 
The seventeenth annual meeting of the New 
York Zoological Society' will be held in the 
grand ball room of the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria, 
Fifth avenue and Thirty-fourth street, New 
York city, on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 1911, at 8:30 
o’clock P. M. 
Moving pictures showing the roping and 
capture of wild animals will be exhibited, and 
a series of colored slides showing whaling in 
Japanese seas will be presented by Roy C. 
Andrews. 
Tickets of admission, together with regular 
notice of the meeting, will be sent out about 
January 1st, 1911. Members may bring one 
guest with them. 
