| OCR Text |
Show 1894.] OPHIDIA OF TRINIDAD, B. W. I. 501 were so small that the snake could not constrict them. He bolted them one after the other, and one of them moving after it had been swallowed, he flew at the spot and buried his teeth in his own side. This snake soon learns to know the person who habitually feeds it, and will manifest considerable interest when he approaches the cage, coming up to the glass and crawling out of the box, when opened, on to his hands and arms. It will often take mice and small birds from the fingers when offered to it. Like many poisonous snakes (Crotalus horridus, for instance), E. cenchris knows wrhen an animal is disabled. A rat given to one was constricted. Contrary to the usual habit, the snake let go before all pulsation had ceased. The rat crawled away. The snake seemed surprised at this, but soon recovered its wits, and, taking hold of the rat by the tail, dragged it into the centre of the box aud without constricting it a second time (not even attempting to do so), waited until the rat was dead, when it swallowed it in the usual manner. A pair under our observation coupled in January. W e have seen specimens 7 feet in length, but the largest we have had under observation have not exceeded 5. One specimen we had inflated its neck when irritated in the style of Coluber corais and C. boddaerti, but not quite so prominently. When the snake has recently changed his skin the dark or reddish-brown closely scaled coat, when seen in sunlight, is glorious, with a lovely iridescent peacock-blue, which earns for the reptile the Creole name of Velvet Mapepire. CORALLUS COOKII, var. RUSCHENBERGII. These snakes couple in the months of February, March, and April, when many are found in the localities they frequent in close proximity. They produce some 20 or 30 young ones at a time, generally about August and September, though we have a young one which was given us when very young in May, so perhaps there is not much reliance to be placed in information as to breeding-time \ The young ones are very small and thin, with enormous heads, and probably their first meals consist of small lizards, such as Anolis alligator, very young birds, mice, and rats. The lizards they constrict. They are soon able, however, to catch full-grown mice, and it is really wonderful how the young snakes manage to pass dowm their excessively slender necks, which are not so thick as a lead-pencil, adult mice. These snakes sometimes lie in water, but very occasionally. The adults attain a length of 7 or 8 feet, and are sometimes of a yellowish-brown colour. More often they are of a deep dark brown, and as they lie in the slender twigs at the furthest extemities of the thick branches of the tree partially screened by the leaves are singularly inconspicuous. 1 Mr. O. Reilly caught a pair coupling in February, and the young were produced the following August. They have coupled in our cages in February, March, and April. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1894, No. XXXIII. 33 |
