xin COLUBRINAE 609 



can be taken up at once. As a rule the new-laid eggs do not 

 contain any visible sign of the embryo, but it often happens that 

 the snake has to delay oviposition, and then the embryos are 

 more or less advanced. This is especially the case with recently 

 caught specimens. The young are hatched in the late summer 

 or in the autumn, and seem to live at first upon soft insects and 

 worms. Curiously enough they are easily drowned when they 

 fall into the water, even in a shallow .tank. My tame snakes 

 have often laid eggs between the stones in the greenhouse ; 

 the young throve well upon unknown food, but most of them 

 met their fate in the water. When they are a few weeks old 

 they are strong enough to take baby-frogs. 



The Grass-Snake becomes very tame, learns to distinguish 

 between different people, allows itself to be handled without 

 hissing or without voiding the obnoxiously smelling contents of its 

 cloaca and anal glands, will in time take the offered food from 

 the hand, and will even crawl up the arm or sleeve and coil 

 itself up contentedly. One of the finest specimens, quite green, 

 without a trace of a collar, and with brownish -red eyes, I 

 caught in the Guadiana, where it had been fishing in mid- 

 stream. It swam towards the bank, dived, and hid itself at the 

 bottom between rocks. This snake, a female, became very tame. 

 It never hibernated, shed its skin regularly every few months, 

 and grew within nine years from 35 inches to 42 inches in 

 length. 



The Grass-Snake is perfectly harmless : although hissing, and 

 striking out furiously with its head, it never bites, not even 

 when it is severely handled. Its only defence consists of the 

 awful contents of the cloaca and the anal glands, the secretion 

 of which smells of concentrated essence of garlic mixed with 

 other indescribable odours. The wildest specimens I have ever 

 met with inhabited a swamp with a little stream to the north of 

 Oporto close to the coast. To my utter surprise some of them 

 actually made for me, swimming along rapidly with the head 

 erect, about 6 inches above the water, and darting forwards 

 with widely opened jaws, but they did not bite. These and 

 other kinds of allied snakes require to drink much and often. 

 Occasionally they drink milk when this is offered them, but 

 that they suck the udders of cows or the breasts of women is 

 an idle fable. 



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