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Robt. W. Kennicott.
My Dear Sir: - Being engaged at present in putting together my
Report on injurious insects, I have only time to make a brief acknowledgement of
the receipt of several very welcome favors from you, since I wrote to you before. The
box sent by Express, I received in Albany a few weeks ago, but have not had the time to look
paticularly at its contents until within a few days past. The rattle-snake produced quite
a sensation in this vicinity - especially among the little folks. When I first opened the box I
transferred him to other quarters, and awoke him. Since then he has remained torpid, in
his cage, in a cold room - and one night has been so cold that I know not but vitality
has been extinguished, though I hope not. He is such a "rara avis" in this quarter of the
country, and so easily kept, that I shall let him live, if he will do so, until he becomes gray-
headed. I am quite ignorant of the treatment he requires - how often he should be watered
and fed and washed and combed and brushed. Pray let me know what attention and manipula-
tion he requires, if any, to insure his health, happiness and longevity. A muscrat which I
killed a few days ago, furnished my cabinet with six new species of ticks and lice, and I
wonder if the hide of his snakeship may not occasionally yield me a few parasites?
I have just taken the butterflies from their paper envelopes, and it has cost me nearly two days
labor to relax their wings and spread and pin them, and have thus made a number of fair
cabinet specimens from them, though the antennae and legs of several got broken off in
removing them from the envelopes. The beetles in the vial of spirits, being safe & secure from
injury must await a more leisure time for examination. Several of the pinned specimens in
the box were considerably broken, some of the needles having got loose. Three of the numbers
also had got off from the needles, and I know not to which specimens they belong. I prefer
common pins, to needles, for piercing the specimens, as the latter in a few years become so
badly rusted as to break in two - and having no heads they cannot be handled, except
with pincers. Many of the specimens I receive from Europe are impaled on short pins; so
it is not so heterodox to use common pins for this business as I formerly supposed it was,