How a Snake Climbs a Tree.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 178, 29 July 1893, Page 3 (Supplement)

How a Snake Climbs a Tree.

The Sdkprise of a Naturalist on Discovering the Way it is Done.

'If you never saw a snake climb a tree,' said a naturalist, ' you have missed a sight thab is worth going a good way to see. i never saw ib myself until two yeara ago, and I could hardly believe my o'yes, for I had always supposed thab when a snake went up a tree ib climbed by throwing itself in a Spiral around the trunk and glided up by moving round and round ib. The book 8 will tell you that is tho way a Enake climbs a tree, and will show you pictures of snakes in the act of twisting themselves about the tree trunk and working upward toward the branches. And tho fact of the matter is they don't do anything of the sort. ' I was up in Monroe County, Pa., and one day went oub to look up some botanical specimens in a deep and thickly wooded ravine, when I camo suddenly upon a black snake clinging to tho side of a small, rough-barked treo. The reptile's head waa about ten feet from the ground, and its body was drawn up by a number of very shorb and abrupt curves. The straighb places between these curvatures fitted close in tho perpendicular corrugations of the bark on the tree for several inches aba stretch, and_ took advantage of every rough spot or crevice in the- bark, both to the right and left. I went up to the foot of the tree, wondering how the snake had managed to get itself in that queer position. I soon found oub, for the reptile, alarmed at my approach, gave me a most interesting explanation of it by moving slowly up the tree trunk, working the curvatures of his long body on tho breo with its head raised fivo or six inches, just as if he were picking his way along on tho ground. Ab first it seemed thab he was coming down the tree, as his movements now and then brought him with hishead pointing towards tho ground, but he was goingupjustthesame. Hedidnotonceattempt to encircle the treo with his body, bub pealed tho side of ib with the greatest ease. He went up into tho treo nearly to tho top, and then, as if he didn't intond to be forced to a place whore he had no particular business, he turned and came down the tree in the same tortuous way that he had gone up it. The movement was slow, the snake occupying at least a minute in going the ,ength of his body, about six feet.'