The Harlequin Snake, or Coral Snake, (_Elaps fulvius_), represents a genus which contains many species, though but few of them occur in America. The King Cobra, (_Naja bungaris_), from the Malay Peninsula, often called Snake-Eating Cobra, is the most dangerous of all serpents, because it is the largest and the most athletic of the venomous species, and for its bite there is no effective antidote. It feeds only on living snakes. The fine specimen exhibited is about ten feet in length. [Illustration: COBRA-DE-CAPELLO.] The Cobra-de-Capello, (_Naja tripudians_), of which some fine specimens are shown, is the terror of India, where it kills between 18,000 and 20,000 people annually! This is the most deadly of all serpents. For its bite, science has thus far been powerless to find an antidote, although Dr. Albert Calmette, of Lille, France, experimenting extensively in this direction, has secured partially successful results. The most vicious snake in North America, and one of the ugliest in appearance, is the Water Moccasin, (_Ancistrodon piscivorus_),—closely related to the beautiful Copperhead, (_A. contortrix_). It is more dreaded in the South than the rattler, because it strikes on the slightest provocation, and without the rattler’s timely warning. Its colors are dull, its scales rough, its body ill-shaped and clumsy, its temper is vicious, and for every reason it is a serpent to be disliked. The Diamond-Back Rattlesnake, (_Crotalus adamanteus_), is too handsome, too showy, and too large to be chosen as the best average type of the genus _Crotalus_; but he is king of his kind, and cannot be ignored. Three species shown side by side in our Reptile House afford striking examples of protective coloration. The Diamond-Back Rattler of Florida and the South is yellow, brown, and black, to match the checkers of sunbeam and shadow that fall upon the sands under the palmetto leaves. THE BATRACHIANS, OR AMPHIBIANS. Among the many wonders of Nature, none is more interesting than those forms which serve to connect the great groups of vertebrate animals, by bridging over what otherwise would seem like impassable chasms. Between the birds and the reptiles there is a fossil bird, called the Archæopteryx, with a long, vertebrated, lizard-like tail, which is covered with feathers, and the Hesperornis, a water bird with teeth, but no wings, which inhabited the shores of the great western lake which has already yielded to American paleontologists a great number of most remarkable fossil forms.