cleared the land and cultivated it. It was great fun for me to go there 
     
     with father and my older brothers. We stayed there all day. We cook- 
     
     ed our meals and ate out in the field, and had real picnics. There was 
     
     abundance of strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, cherries and 
     
     hazel and beech nuts in their season. We ate all we could and took 
     
     dishfuls of them home. It was the worst place I ever saw for snakes; 
     
     we were always in dread of them. We would not dare to go barefooted 
     
     there. We pulled our sock legs over our pants to keep the snakes 
     
     from going up and biting us. One dav a neighbour boy was stowing 
     
     hay on a loft; when a snake got pitched up with the hay. It got under 
     
     his clothes and bit him many times, he got frantic and jumped down 
     
     on the hard floor. He was badly hurt and bitten, butihe got well 
     
     without very serious results from his terrible experience. 
     
    
   
   
    
     H 012/ 4 Snake Take; His Meals 
     
    
   
   
    
     A snake takes his meals whenever he can get them, unless he is al- 
     
     ready too full for any more. I have found some so full they could 
     
     scarcely move. An average sized snake can swallow an average sized 
     
     frog or toad; it is interesting, but not pleasurable, to watch him do 
     
     it. It looks cruel and distressing but it is not so distressing to the 
     
     toad or frog as one might suppose it to be. The snake will glide near a 
     
     frog or await its approach and gently catch it by a hind leg and suck 
     
     it into his mouth so smoothly that the frog makes very little, if any, 
     
     resistance; it seems to have no pain. It may be the snake has some kind 
     
     of dope to stupefy the frog, or mesmerise it. One might think the 
     
     snake would choke with such a big mouthful. but he can expand his 
     
     mouth wonderfully. The frog goes down tail first—or from where his 
     
     tail was when he was little. When the snake gets the frog down to its 
     
     front legs, he tucks them, one at a time, into the sides of his mouth; 
     
     he gives his mouth a twist somewhat like a boy does when tucking in a 
     
     big mouthful. As the frog’s head disappears its eyes are open and 
     
     bright and it seems to be comfortable. If the snake were killed immedi- 
     
     ately'and the frog taken out of him it would be dead or beyond restor- 
     
     ation to life. The squeezing it got might account, in part, for that, but 
     
     likely the snake saliva is powerful and acts quickly. I never let a snake 
     
    
   
   
    
     escape if I could kill him. I feared and hated them. People have a 
     
    
   
   
    
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