. Animate creation : popular edition of "Our living world" : a natural history. Zoology; Zoology. THE DIAMOND RATTLESNAKE. 103 The Rattlesnakes are peculiar to America, embraced in the family Crotalidce, the latter term meaning, in the Greek, rattlers, referring to the characteristic habit of some of the species. They have two fangs on the upper jaw, which are grooved, and suited to deliver the liquid poison which lies in a sac at the roots. Eighteen species of Rattlesnakes are now known in North America. The Northern Rattlesnake {Crotalus horridus), called also the Banded Rattlesnak
. Animate creation : popular edition of "Our living world" : a natural history. Zoology; Zoology. THE DIAMOND RATTLESNAKE. 103 The Rattlesnakes are peculiar to America, embraced in the family Crotalidce, the latter term meaning, in the Greek, rattlers, referring to the characteristic habit of some of the species. They have two fangs on the upper jaw, which are grooved, and suited to deliver the liquid poison which lies in a sac at the roots. Eighteen species of Rattlesnakes are now known in North America. The Northern Rattlesnake {Crotalus horridus), called also the Banded Rattlesnake, is the more common of the few species of this dreaded family of reptiles. It is illustrated together with the Crotalus adamanteus, another American Rattlesnake. The Banded Rattle- snake is found in rocky places on dry soil, reaching in its range as far north as the middle of New England and New York State, west as far as the Rocky Moimtains, and south to the Gulf States. Along the shores of Lake Champlain it is parti(!ularly abundant. Dr. DeKay, the eminent zoologist of the State of New Yoi'k, gives the following from a local newspaper of the day:— " Two men in three days killed eleven hundred and four Rattlesnakes on Tongue Moun- tain, in the tov\Ti of Bolton, New ; '^ i Jil tui tc THE DIAMOND AND THE NORTHERN RATTLESNAKE. —(?ra<(rf!« adamanteiix and Crotalus horriaus. (One-tenth natural size.) Tlie popular belief that a rattle is added yearly is not correct. Dr. Holbrook, the author on American Reptiles, says he has known one to add two rattles in a year, and Dr. Bachman observed four added in the same period. Mr. Peale, of the Museum in Philadelphia, kept a Rattlesnake fourteen years. It had, when first confined, eleven rattles. Several were lost annually, and new ones took their place. At its death there Avere but eleven rattles, though It had increased in length four inches. Holbrook saw one having twenty-one rattles. Accounts are occasional
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Keywords: ., bookauthorbr, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectzoology
