. The American natural history; a foundation of useful knowledge of the higher animals of North America. Natural history. COMMON NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES 345 will leap wildly from the edge of a rock or a steep bank in order to escape. If cornered, it makes a fierce but often absurd fight, sometimes be-. WESTERN COACH-WHIP SNAKE, OR BED RACER. coming so frantic that it bites its own body. (R. L. Ditmars.) This snake is a good climber, swims well, and is active and quick in movement, but it has no real power to speak of. It is not an enemy of the rattlesnake, as many persons suppose, but it devour
. The American natural history; a foundation of useful knowledge of the higher animals of North America. Natural history. COMMON NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES 345 will leap wildly from the edge of a rock or a steep bank in order to escape. If cornered, it makes a fierce but often absurd fight, sometimes be-. WESTERN COACH-WHIP SNAKE, OR BED RACER. coming so frantic that it bites its own body. (R. L. Ditmars.) This snake is a good climber, swims well, and is active and quick in movement, but it has no real power to speak of. It is not an enemy of the rattlesnake, as many persons suppose, but it devours snakes that are smaller and weaker than itself. Its favorite food consists of small rodents, young birds, eggs and frogs, but it does not eat fish. It is a great destroyer of mice and moles, and deserves well of the farmer on that account. The young differ in color from adult specimens, being slaty gray, with chestnut-brown saddles on the back. In the third year, these colors fade, and the snake assumes its adult color. Speak- ing generally, the black form of this species oc- curs nearly everywhere throughout the United States cast of the Mississippi into New England. What is called the intermediate color is too widely scattered to be defined, while the green-and-yel- low form is found from Nebraska and Louisiana westward to the Pacific coast, and from Puget Sound to San Diego. The length of this snake, when adult, varies from 40 to 58 inches. The Coach-Whip Snake^ is closely related 1 Za-me'nis fla-gel'lum. to the preceding species (both being members of the same genus), and has similar habits. It is even more slender than the black-snake. Its standard color is, toward the head, black or light yellowish-brown, fading out rapidly back- ward, until the tail becomes nearly white. But these colors vary exceedingly in widely separated localities. This is a southern snake,' and extends from Florida quite across the continent to California. In the far Southwest, its colors are so m
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