THE RING SNAKE. 35 



Its favourite food is frogs, which it catches with ease, being, like 

 all the colubrines, a swiftly gliding, active snake. It will also eat 

 young birds or field mice, and for lack of frogs will sometimes take 

 a toad for supper, but not by preference. 



The ring snake has fewer synonyms than most of its relatives, 

 and all apply well to its characteristics. Thus it is the Coluber 

 natrix of one herpetologist, the Natrix torquata of another, while 

 a third considers the collar a generic distinction, and calls it 

 Torquata natrix ; and by the latest ophiologists the keeled scales 

 mark the genus, and it becomes Tropidonotus natrix. 



As a pet it is the most popular of our English snakes. Accounts 

 of its behaviour in captivity, its tameness, its attachment to those 

 who feed and caress it, its coming to drink what water or milk is 

 placed in a saucer near it, with numerous anecdotes of its docility 

 and intelligence, abound in natural history books. But, to its 

 prejudice, it has the character of being very offensive. When 

 tamed and accustomed to its keepers this ceases to be the case. 

 It is provided with glands near the anus, and in self-protection, 



Fig. 14. — a, Ventral scales, b, Sub-caudal scales. 



when alarmed or excited, emits a very offensive odour, not other 

 wise, or so many friends would not have written in its favour. 



Those who for the first time see it feed are filled with wonder 

 at the process, and with good reason. The frog is so much bigger 

 than the head of the snake that holds it, that to swallow it 

 undivided seems an impossibility. But now we witness the 

 adaptation of those loosely articulated jaws to suit the emergency. 

 If the snake has been pursuing the frog the latter is probably 

 caught by a hind leg, and is making violent efforts to escape. But, 

 without loosening its hold, the snake, by alternate movements of 

 the jaws, — first the right then the left, like two hands hauling a 

 rope, — contrives to work the frog round till the head is in its mouth, 

 and then you see the jaws stretch apart, and the head widening 

 out of all shape while froggy gradually disappears. Those rows 

 of slanting teeth, described in Chapter II., retain a firm hold, while 

 the jaws alternately advance over the prey, which soon ceases to 

 resist ; though the victim will renew the kicking when several 



