This fine specimen, natural size, and also the Tapering Rattle, both from Mexico, were lent to me by J. G. Braden, Esq. of Lewes, and copied accurately.] Not the least important of all the speculations to which the rattling tail has given rise, is the question, ‘Of what use is it?’ for we know that nothing exists in vain. Apart from the fact that the American savages make some medicinal use of the rattle, this elaborated, curious, and not unsightly instrument has as yet had no special and determined office assigned to it to the advantage of its possessor, though theories regarding it are numerous. Formerly, when only the dangerous powers of the reptile were understood, it was sufficient to say of it in a tone of pious thankfulness, that the Almighty had so armed this serpent as a warning to its enemies. Some of those early writers introduce the rattlesnake to us as the most benevolent and disinterested of dumb animals, conscientiously living up to his duties, obedient to that ‘peculiar Providence’ which has given him a rattle ‘to warn the inadvertent intruder of danger.’ ‘He maketh such a noise that he catcheth very few,’ an evidence of imprudence wholly inconsistent with his inherited ‘wisdom.’ Indeed, between the character given of this ‘superb reptile’ by Chateaubriand, and the self-sacrificing qualities assigned it by some other writers, we can only wonder how a hungry rattlesnake ever managed to survive at all, and how it is that the race is not extinct long ago. That the early and unscientific travellers, speaking from a thankful experience of having escaped a rattlesnake through _hearing_ where it was, should seek no further for the utility of the rattle, is not much to be wondered at. But so lately as 1871 one of our popular physiologists, whose work is a textbook, has expatiated on this theme so positively that it is necessary to quote his words on this ‘admirable provision of nature,’ which apparently has elaborated a unique appendage for the purpose of starving its proprietor! ‘The intention of this organ is so obvious, that the most obtuse cannot contemplate it without at once appreciating the beauty of the contrivance.... It (the snake) announces the place of its concealment, even when at rest, to caution the inadvertent intruder against too near an approach.’[86] If all the venomous serpents were thus beneficently armed (the cobras of India especially), the crusade against snakes would be at an end, or never need have been instituted; for supposing the heedless loiterer to have been a bird, squirrel, guinea-pig, or any of the lesser mammalia which form the food of most snakes, these happy creatures would have had the world to themselves long ago, while vipers had kindly starved themselves out of all traces. ‘Every creature of God is good,’ we must repeat and ponder over. Even a deadly rattlesnake, and every part of that rattlesnake, has its appointed use.