Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/155

 bellowing of a bull, which has given it its name. Hardly less strange was the cry of the tree frog, which the early colonists found it as difficult to place as their descendants in the present age. There is no evidence that rattlesnakes were discovered in the country adjacent to Jamestown by the adventurers of 1607, although Clayton saw them there towards the end of the century. They were probably as numerous in the forests extending to the southwest on the opposite shore of the Powhatan as they were an hundred and twenty years later, when Colonel William Byrd was compelled to defer until autumn, on one occasion, the survey in running the boundary line, owing to the constant danger to which their presence exposed his men. Other varieties of snakes were common, such as the puff adder, the moccasin, the corn, the black, the water, and the horn.