File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17972314210).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo15amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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42 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL that there is a man-eating fish of this type in the Amazon. One day when we were going down the Unknown River Mr. Cherrie and I in the same canoe, we saw a flying fish. Of course everyone knows about the flying fish on the ocean but I had no idea there were flying fish on the South American streams. I very much wish that some ichthy- ologist would go down to South America and come back with not only a collection of the fishes but also full notes on their life histories. We did not see very many snakes, I suppose only about twenty ven- omous ones. The most venomous are those somewhat akin to our rattle- snakes but with no rattles One of the most common is the j a r a r a c a, known in Marti- nique as the fer-de- lance. One of the biggest is called the bushmaster and at- tains a length of about ten feet. These snakes are very poisonous and very dangerous. The mussurama is another South American snake, and it lives on poisonous snakes. It habitually kills and eats these dangerous reptiles, its most common prey being the jararaca. I saw the feat performed at a laboratory where poisonous snakes are being studied to secure antidotes to the poisons and
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Photo hy Ktrinit Rooserelt Courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons Boy with parakeet and young coati. Para- keets are attractive but noisy little birds flying to and fro in the tops nf palms. Coatis in jungle trees look like reddish lanky raccoons and flght savagely with both teeth and claws to develop enemies to the snakes them- selves. Such an enemy is this mus- surama which must be like our king snake — but larger. The king snake is a particularly pleasant snake; it is friendly toward mankind, not poisonous and can be handled freely. The scien- tists at the laboratory brought cut a big good-natured mussurama which I held between my arm and coat. Then they brought out a fairly large fer- de-lance about nine inches shorter than the mussurama and warning me to keep away, put it on the table. Then they told me to put my snake where it could get at the fer-de-lance. I put down my snake on the table and it glided up toward the coiled fer-de- lance. My snake was perfectly free from excitement and I did not sup- pose it meant to do anything, that it was not hungry. It put its "nose" against the body of the fer-de-lance and mo^'ed toward the head. The fer-de- lance's temper was aroused and it coiled and struck. The return blow was so quick that I could not see just what happened. The mussurama had the fer-de-lance by the lower jaw, the mouth wide open. The latter struck once again. After that it made no further effort to defend itself in any way. The poisonous snake is a

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