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Show FACTS ABOUT SNAKES. Allen S. Williams, who has been camping out all Hummer at Storm King mountain, where he capfured a big collection col-lection of snakes, gave a lecture tonight to-night In Willard hall. The lecturer carried 100 snakes in paper bag and suitcases and kept them on a piano when he was not exhibiting them. Evidently the people of Mt. Vernon are not interested in the subject of snakes, for the audience was very slim. It was understood that Mr. Williams waa only trying out his lecture, however, how-ever, and that ha Intends to devote much time this winter talking to the pupils of; the New York city public schools. "I will tell you some very . queer things about snakes," said he. -"The Bible begins with a snake, and later on It gives us to understand that a snake can't hear. 'As deaf as an adder' is an Old saying. It is true that snakes have no ears, but I have discovered discov-ered that they can hear through their tongues. "Another remarkable thing that a snake can do is to live for two years without feeding. Then, again, I have known cases where snakes have come to life after they had been frozen as stiff as walking-sticks. Last January two of my blacksnakes were frozen so hard that I could have broken them in pieces. My wife put them on hot-water hot-water bags, and in an hour they began to show signs of life. When about four Inches of their bodies were thawed out she began feeding them hot milk, and Jt was not long until they were wriggling wrig-gling about the parlor floor as good as new." Mr. Williams said that recently one of his snakes was suffering from indigestion. indi-gestion. He found that he had swallowed swal-lowed a large hen's egg, and in order to cure him he hit him on the back and crushed the egg, after which the reptile recovered. Of the eleven kinds of snakes which exitt in New York, Mr. Williams says, only two are poisonous, the copperhead and the rattler. The others, he says, such as blacksnakes, millwiakes, garter gar-ter snakes and spreading adders, are harmless, and should not be killed, because be-cause they benefit the farmers and gardeners gar-deners by destroying bugs, moles, field mice and angleworms, which prey on fruit and vegetable?. Mt. Vernon (N. Y.) cor. New York Sun. |