A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HERPETOLOGY OF MISSOURI.* JULIUS HURTER. It is only for the last few years that my son Henry, who is abo an enthusiast in this particular line, and I, have extended our excursions into Jefferson County, where we have found a very interesting field in the outrunners of the Ozark mountains, where we begin to encounter the hardier species of the Subtropical realm which the late Professor Edw. D. Cope subdivided into the Austroriparian and Sonorian subregions. The farther south we proceed in the Ozark mountains the more numerous become not only the species but also the specimens, so that, when we reach the southern slope of these mountain chains in Missouri, as we had the opportunity of doing this year (but unfortunately a little too late in the season), one would think he was near the Gulf of Mexico, so plentiful do these animals become. I may call attention to the fact that the Ozark mountains, up to this date, have not been well investigated in either their fauna or flora. The literature is also very meager. For example, Professor D. S. Jordan, in his Manual of Vertebrate Animals of the Northern United States, including the district north and east of the Ozarks and east of the Missouri river, stops right there and leaves our mountains as a "terra incognita," to science. I would like to remind you also of the fact that reptiles and batrachia are not migratory, like birds or mammals, and for this reason they give a clearer idea of the geographical realm to which they belong. I will now consider unrecorded species for the fauna of the State of Missouri. Besides two Rattlesnakes and the Copperhead, which we encounter all over the State, we find in our southern frontier counties another Pit viper, called * Presented to The Academy of Science of St. Louis, December 6, 1897. the Cottonmouth, Black Moccasin or Water Moccasin (Aghistrodon piscivorus Lacépède), a real poisonous snake not to be confounded with what the farmers and fishermen in the northern and central part of the State call Water Moccasin, which is the common Watersnake (Natrix sipedon Linnaeus), a non-poisonous snake, but which, in old specimens, has a very close resemblance to the true Cottonmouth, so that it takes a person already very familiar with the habits of either of them to distinguish one kind from the other. In the year 1892, when we had a very high river and all the bottom lands opposite the city of St. Louis were inundated so that the Watersnakes had sought a refuge in some of the larger trees yet projecting out of the water, we captured a few of them by approaching the trees with a skiff. At the request of the Agricultural Department of Washington, D. C., I sent them some very large specimens of the common Watersnake, accompanied by a large Cottonmouth, just to show the close resemblance of the two kinds. The next species I wish to mention is a true Watersnake (Natrix fasciata Linnaeus), the Banded or Southern Watersnake. We found these to be very abundant in Butler and Stoddard Counties. They have the same habits as all other water snakes, and those which we found and captured were all gorged with small pikes. Holbrook's Watersnake or the Diamond Watersnake (Natrix rhombifer Hallowell) is our next species. I have caught specimens of this kind right opposite St. Louis, in Madison, St. Clair and Monroe Counties, Illinois, but had not the opportunity to find any in Missouri until this year, when I found them in Butler and Stoddard Counties. They were plentiful, and also show a little different marking, particularly on the ventral side of the body, from those which we caught in Illinois. They represent plainly only a variety of the common Watersnake, as Professor Samuel Garman in his synopsis of North American snakes has arranged them. The last kind of serpent to report as new to the State is Haldea striatula Linnaeus, the Little Brown Snake, a small slender animal hardly over a foot in length. We found these for the first time in the neighborhood of Pevely, Jeffer |