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Show 1887.] REV. G. H. R. FISK ON THE DESTRUCTION OF SNAKES. 341 hamachates) was written for me at my request by my friend Mr. Sydney Cowper, who, you may remember, was the Cape representative at the late Colonial and Indian Exhibition. His name is guarantee of strict accuracy. " I send you a copy of his writing, thinking it may be interesting, showing as it does a way in which perhaps many young snakes are destroyed. Were not an immense number of the eggs and of the young of snakes destroyed by their natural enemies, their number would soon in some parts become so great as to be very inconvenient indeed to other animals and to man also. " I have long known that cats kill snakes. I have seen a lizard kill a snake. You will remember a snake which I sent to your Society which had devoured the eggs laid by another snake, and now we have an instance of a Mouse killing and eating a young venomous snake. " Probably there are many other ways in which great numbers are destroyed before they reach an age and size when they become very dangerous. " 'On Saturday the 19th February m y friend Mr. W . Holms and I managed to secure on Wynberg flats, without injury to the specimens, two young ' Ringhals,' probably from 7 to 14 days old, measuring the one some 10 inches and the other 9 inches in length. W e brought them home in our handkerchiefs, placed them in a bandbox, and proceeded to find food for them. A tour round the garden (Rokeby, Wynberg) produced one tortoise, one toad, one field-mouse, one cricket, two spiders, and some gentles. These, excepting the toad, were all placed in the bandbox with the two snakes, and we expected to find the snakes in good condition the following morning. " ' O n looking into the box next morning I found but three survivors of the previous night, namely the tortoise, the mouse, and one ' Ringhals.' The mouse had evidently had the best of it, for he was devouring the remains of one of the snakes, and, judging by the distention of his little abdomen, I think he must also have consumed the ciicket, spiders, and gentles. I watched the survivors attentively during Sunday, and saw the mouse make an onslaught on the remaining Ringhals. He fastened on the snake's back with his tiny sharp claws and pecked away with his teeth, the snake trying its utmost to wriggle away and to secrete itself under the tortoise, which it eventually managed to do. The snake seemed much frightened, and, although he struck at the mouse frequently, and sometimes with apparent success, the mouse generally avoided the stroke with the utmost agility, and before letting go had ridden three or four times round the bandbox on the snake's back. I imagine that the fang of a young 'Ringhals' is not sufficiently developed to penetrate the thick hair on a mouse. I have written this account to you, as the fact of the mouse having eaten the snake is antagonistic to the generally conceived idea of reptilian customs. " 'The Ringhals left for England by the R.M.S. Hawarden Castle on the 2nd inst., and the mouse I returned to his habitat under the stump of a tree in the garden, and although I have several times |