STRANGE HOBBY

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1933, Page 21 (Supplement)

STRANGE HOBBY

BIG BOX OF REPTILES. HAIRDRESSER'S COLLECTION. Marked “Reptiles—With Care,” a black tin box of considerable dimensions reposes in a dark corner of the purser’s office on board the Aberdeen and Commonwealth liner Largs Bay, which left Sydney for London i-ecently. When the box was deposited in the office at sydney the purser was assured that the snakes were all dead and harmless, but he asserted that he could hear shufflings and scrapings coming from the box. He wa/not satisfied until he was shown the reptiles preserved in bottles. The collection is being taken to England by Mr. G. Adams, of Kyogle, New South Wales, who is returning to Haya End, Middlesex, after an absence of many years. “For the last 13 years I have been a master hairdresser at Kyogle,” said Mr. Adams, “but as I iam now aged 70, my wife and I decided to return to England. My customers at Kyogle always brought me any snakes they chanced to kill, and before long I had received such a large number of these ‘presents’ that I began to make a hobby of reptile collecting. “In that tin box there are more than 50 snakes, the pick of my collection ! —and all were venomous. The largest is a tiger snake, more than sft in length, and the smallest is an Bin black snake, no thicker than a lead pencil. Perhaps the most deadly is the death adder, which measures more than 2ft It is probably one of the largest death adders ever known.”