Serpent Psychology an Unplowed Field. At this date (1922) we know only the rudiments of serpent intelligence and temperament. In the wilds, serpents are most elusive and difficult to determine. In captivity they are passive and undemonstrative. We do not know how much memory they have, they rarely show what they think, and on most subjects we do not know where they stand. But the future will change all this. During the past twenty years the number of herpetologists in the United States has increased about tenfold. It is fairly impossible that serpent psychology should much longer remain unstudied, and unrevealed along the lines of plain common- sense.
The Ways of Crocodiles. The ways of crocodiles are dark and deep; their thoughts are few and far between. Their wisdom is above that of the tortoises and turtles, but below that of the serpents. I have had field experience with four species of crocodilians in the New World and three in the Old. With but slight exceptions they all think alike and act alike.
The great salt-water crocodile of the Malay Peninsula and Borneo is the only real man-eater I ever met. Except under the most provocative circumstances, all the others I have met are practically harmless to man. This includes the Florida species, the Orinoco crocodile, the little one from Cuba, the alligator, the Indian gavial and the Indian crocodile (C. palustris).
The salt-water crocodile, that I have seen swimming out in the ocean two miles or more from shore, is in Borneo a voracious man- eater. It skilfully stalks its prey in the murky rivers where Malay and Dyak women and children come down to the village bathing place to dip up water and to bathe. There, unseen in the muddy water, the monster glides up stealthily, seizes his victim by the leg, and holding it tightly backs off into deep water and disappears. The victims are drowned, not bitten to death.
I found in Ceylon that the Indian crocodile is a shameless cannibal, devouring the skinned carcasses of its relatives whenever an opportunity offered.
The Florida crocodile is the shrewdest species of all those I know personally. It has the strange habit of digging out deep and spacious burrows for concealment, in the perpendicular sandy banks of southern Florida rivers where the deep water comes right up to the shore. Starting well under low-water mark, the crock digs in the yielding sand, straight into the bank, a roomy subterranean chamber. In this snug retreat he once was safe from all his enemies,—until the fatal day when his secret was discovered, and revealed to a grasping world. Since that time, the Alligator Joes of Palm Beach and Miami have made a business of personally conducting parties of northern visitors, at $50 per catch, to witness the adventure of catching a nine-foot crocodile alive. The dens are located by probing the sand with long iron rods. A rope noose is set over the den's entrance, and when all is ready, a confederate probes the crocodile out of its den and into the fatal noose.
Today the Florida crocodile is so nearly extinct that it required two years of diligent inquiry to produce one live specimen subject to purchase.
Common Sense in the Common Toad. Last spring, in planting a lot of trees on our lawn, a round tree-hole that stood for several days unoccupied finally accumulated about a dozen toads. Its two feet of straight depth was unscalable, and when finally discovered the toads were tired of their imprisonment. Partly as a test of their common-sense, Mr. George T. Fielding placed a six-inch board in the hole, at an angle of about thirty degrees, but fairly leading out of the trap.
In very quick time the toads recognized the possibilities of the inclined plane and hopped upward to liberty. In the use of this opportunity they showed more wisdom than our mountain sheep manifest concerning the same kind of an improvement designed to enable them to reach the roof of their building. XVII