The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-10-22

s1. Before he went into the dog-sehooi business, Professor Wood used to be a lion tanner with Barnum's circus anu before that he used to do parachute leap from a hot-air balloon.
 But in the collection of queer oeeu- pations these will take a back seat when o. W. Mason comes in with his MT. Mason lives in Boston and makes ms living by catching snakes. Not the haffh- less little garden snakes, the the Neilo nous rattlers and copperheads, the kliia that always go loaded with poisoh Ans poison is what he Is after. Alter eNeIace= ing and bottllng it he sells it to college professors who are experimenting Wieh that kind of stuff. The bodies are also bottled up and labeled These go over the same road for the edihcation of the stu dents. Snake oil is another source or revenue for MT. Mason. This goes mostly into toilet preparations, such as race creams for beautifying the complexion. Bull snakes are the kind he catches for this purpose A nice healthy bull snake, caught around the fall of the year. will yield a dollars worth of oil, but II they are not fat enough when he catches them, MT Mason fattens them up before killing.
 Snake Dentist.
 Even MT. Mason's occupation pales, however, in the light of that in which Emil metzner of San Antonio, Texas. is engaged. He Is employed as snake dentist by a firm which sells snakes to the many so-called snake charmers. Metz ner's occupation is removing the deadly fangs from various kind of reptiles so that snake chamers can charm them without running any risk. He does his work with an ordinary pair of scissors anu holds the snake in his bare hands while he cuts out it's fangs He has been bitten, to be sure. but when one of his patients catch him mapping he does not go for that infallble snakebite cure whisky. It is not a cure for snake bites at all, but merely serves to keep up the strength of the bitten one until the right remedy can be applied. Metzners cure is carbolic acid. When he gets bite, which is not very often, he cuts the wound wide open and applies the acid rather freely. Speaking of snakes reminds me of another queer way of earning a living and coming to think of it we will have to give the prize banner to MT. Carl Beers, who runs q big greenhouse in Bangor. Maine. Nothing queer about running house. but there is about MT. Beers little side line occupation. He raises worms, common. ordinary angle worms and sells them to fishermen. He gets 12 cents for ten worms, or $l a hun dred, and does business of about $300 a year. Some of his worms are more than eight inches long and as big around as your largest finger. but these come from special stock imported from Bel gium, where they raise the biggest earth worms In the world. Did you know that earthworms have three distinct ways of increasing the family? They have, for a fact, and if you don't want to take my word just look 1t up yourself First, the female lays eggs by the thousand and nine hundred and ninety-nne out of every thousand eggs hatch. After the egg ! laying season Is over the females put out little pink spines and these grow into
 worms and drop off, then when the worms get to be over three years old they break in two and each part makes | new worm. As l said before, it cer- tainly is surprising what queer occupa- | tions some people get into"