SLEEPING WITH SERPENTS.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 994, 7 February 1883, Page 4

SLEEPING WITH SERPENTS.

Professor Bell, the Smithsonian Institution's agent, shipped his last collection of snakes to the North recently and already has his museum full again. It is surprising how rapidly they become domesticated under his treatment. During the recent cold snap some of them that he turned loose in his room at night climbed up the bedposts and coiled themselves up in his blankets. He felt them hunting for cosy spots about his legs, and knew.that he ought to getup and provide them with some loose straw, but a sleepy man in a warm bed of a cold night is not over-obliging, and the Professor snored on musically, as is his custom. The reptiles crowded upon one another, quarrelled, fought a little, hissed, but the Professor did not budge : only now and then he would wake slightly and cry softly : “ Whist, boys; be easy, boys.”

Atlastabig coachwhip snake found an opening near the edge of the blankets and slowly glided in. There was a gentle waving up and down of, the bedclothes as the big clay bank serpent moved about, getting himself comfortable, when suddenly lie slapped about twothirds of Iris frigid length against the warm legs of the professor. The professor made a violehtremark. He sat up in bed, gathered ahand/ul of snakes in each hand, depositing them carefully on the floor, then throwing < back the bedclothes he administered a kick that sent the coach whip flying through the dark to the other end of the room, encountering thedamp:iri its aerial flight and knocking from its bracket oh the wall the fragile skull of an ancient Florida mound builder.

“ Freeze and be hanged!” exclaimed, the irate professor. “ ITI share my bed with you, but you shan’t’ drive me out.” He drew the blankets over him. A few minutes later several pairs of little red eyes moved up the bedposts on either side, and soon snake herder and snakes, in one couch, were lost in peaceful sleep.—Jacksonville, Fla., Times.