Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/122

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Woodcraft
101

wound; (5) treat the wound as antiseptieally as it is possible with the means at hand and hurry to a doctor. The danger depends greatly on the amount of the poison injected, hence upon the size of the snake. It is for this reason that the big Florida rattlesnakes which grow to six feet and over are more

to be feared than are other poisonous snakes. Of these, we have in our country, besides the rattlesnakes, the water moccasin, or cotton Water moccasin mouth, the copperhead, and the coral snake. The latter is a bright-colored snake of red, yellow, and black rings found in the South, but it is usually small, and not aggressive, so that but few cases of poisoning are known. The other two are common enough, the former from Norfolk, Va., south, the other all over the eastern country from Texas to Massachusetts. They are usually confounded, however, with two perfectly harmless snakes, the cotton mouth with the common water snake, the copperhead with the so-called spreading adder, but as their differences have to be learned from actual inspection and are very hard to express in a description which would help to identify living specimens, it is wisest to keep away from all of them.

See "The Poisonous Snakes of North America." By Leonard Stejneger, published by Government Printing office, Washington.

INSECTS AND BUTTERFLIES[1]
United States, Bureau of Entomology

There is an advantage in the study of insects over most other branches of nature, excepting perhaps plants, in that there is

plenty of material. You may have to tramp miles to see a certain bird or wild animal, but if you will sit down on the first patch of grass you are sure to see something going on in the insect world.

Butterflies

Nearly all insects go through several different stages. The young bird is very much like its parent, so is the young squirrel or a young snake or a


  1. Illustrations are copies from Comstock's "How to Know the Butterfllies." through courtesy of D. Appleton & Company.