COBRA-DE-CAPELLO.
The Cobra-de-Capello, (Naja tripudians), of which some fine specimens are shown, is the terror of India, where it kills between 18,000 and 20,000 people annually! This is the most deadly of all serpents. For its bite, science has thus far been powerless to find an antidote, although Dr. Albert Calmette, of Lille, France, experimenting extensively in this direction, has secured partially successful results.
The most vicious snake in North America, and one of the ugliest in appearance, is the Water Moccasin, (Ancistrodon piscivorus),—closely related to the beautiful Copperhead, (A. contortrix). It is more dreaded in the South than the rattler, because it strikes on the slightest provocation, and without the rattler’s timely warning. Its colors are dull, its scales rough, its body ill-shaped and clumsy, its temper is vicious, and for every reason it is a serpent to be disliked.
The Diamond-Back Rattlesnake, (Crotalus adamanteus), is too handsome, too showy, and too large to be chosen as the best average type of the genus Crotalus; but he is king of his kind, and cannot be ignored. Three species shown side by side in our Reptile House afford striking examples of protective coloration. The Diamond-Back Rattler of Florida and the South is yellow, brown, and black, to match the checkers of sunbeam and shadow that fall upon the sands under the palmetto leaves.
THE BATRACHIANS, OR AMPHIBIANS.
Among the many wonders of Nature, none is more interesting than those forms which serve to connect the great groups of vertebrate animals, by bridging over what otherwise would seem like impassable chasms.
Between the birds and the reptiles there is a fossil bird, called the Archæopteryx, with a long, vertebrated, lizard-like tail, which is covered with feathers, and the Hesperornis, a water bird with teeth, but no wings, which inhabited the shores of the great western lake which has already yielded to American paleontologists a great number of most remarkable fossil forms.
Between the reptiles and the fishes, stretches a wonderful chain of living links by which those two Classes of vertebrates are so closely and unbrokenly united, and by such an array of forms, that they constitute an independent Class, the Batrachia, or Amphibia. In the transition from water to land, from fins and gills to legs and lungs, Nature has made some strange combinations. In some instances the fins, legs, lungs and gills have become so mixed that several notable misfits have resulted, and in some cases we see gills and legs going together, while in other lungs and fins are associated.
The Reptile House contains about two dozen species of Amphibians, and it is reasonably certain that this number will be maintained and increased. They are to be found in small aquarium cases, ranged along the south side and eastern end of the Main Hall.
The Bullfrog, (Rana catesbiana), is a fair representative of the Batrachians which stand nearest to the true land-going reptiles. During the early stages of its existence it is in turn, a fin-tailed tadpole with no legs, a short-tailed tadpole with a pair of front legs, a shorter-tailed tadpole with four legs, and finally a fully-developed, land-going frog with a voice like a small bull, and no tail whatever. Of the genus Rana, there are five species in the eastern United States, several of which inhabit the Zoological Park.