them, of a large size, were killed by the seamen. [Sidenote: RATTLESNAKES.] Two kinds of rattlesnakes are found in this part of the country; the one is of a deep brown colour, clouded with yellow, and is seldom met with more than thirty inches in length. It usually frequents marshes and low meadows, where it does great mischief amongst cattle, which it bites mostly in the lips as they are grazing. The other sort is of a greenish yellow colour, clouded with brown, and attains nearly twice the size of the other. It is most commonly found between three and four feet in length, and as thick as the wrist of a large man. The rattlesnake is much thicker in proportion to its length than any other snake, and it is thickest in the middle of the body, which approaches somewhat to a triangular form, the belly being flat, and the back bone rising higher than any other part of the animal. The rattle, with which this serpent is provided, is at the end of the tail; it is usually about half an inch in breadth, one quarter of an inch in thickness, and each joint about half an inch long. The joint consists of a number of little cases of a dry horny substance, inclosed one within another, and not only the outermost of these little cases articulates with the outermost case of the contiguous joint, but each case, even to the smallest one of all, at the inside, is connected by a sort of joint with the corresponding case in the next joint of the rattle. The little cases or shells lie very loosely within one another, and the noise proceeds from their dry and hard coats striking one against the other. It is said that the animal gains a fresh joint to its rattle every year; of this, however, I have great doubts, for the largest snakes are frequently found to have the fewest joints to their rattles. A medical gentleman in the neighbourhood of Newmarket, behind the Blue Mountains, in Virginia, had a rattle in his possession, which contained no less than thirty-two joints; yet the snake from which it was taken scarcely admeasured five feet; rattlesnakes, however, of the same kind, and in the same part of the country, have been found of a greater length with not more than ten rattles. One of the snakes, which we saw killed on Bass Island, in Lake Erie, had no more than four joints in its rattle, and yet it was nearly four feet long.