1 64 SNAKES, 



day prove a chilly one, a much lighter drain on the larder 

 is observable, while a warm, bright day will show a heavy 

 poulterer's bill /// I'c OpJiidariinn. Dr. A. Stradling, a 

 practical ophiologist, found that the common English snakes 

 * thrive exceedingly by reason of their increased appetites,' 

 when taken to the tropics. 'It is impossible to say what 

 degree of heat a reptile will not stand and enjoy,' says this 

 writer {Field, July 28, 1881). 'On the hottest days in the 

 hottest places on earth, one surprises snakes and lizards 

 basking in the blazing sun-glare, on sands and rocks which 

 it would almost blister the hand to touch.' Florida is the 

 most southern extreme of my own experience ; but during a 

 summer there one could not rest the hand on the almost 

 burning stones and walls on which the reptiles delightedly 

 reposed ; and even in England, during a hot August, my 

 little Bournemouth lizards were positively hot to the touch 

 when basking in the full power of a bright noon sun. Dumeril 

 corroborates these facts when he says some reptiles can endure 

 a temperature higher than blood-heat. Sometimes in early 

 spring he found a snake seeming to be asleep under a very 

 hot wall w^hich had been exposed to the mid-day sun, but 

 which had been several hours in shadow. So tenaciously 

 had the reptile retained the heat it had then absorbed, that 

 though the air now felt cold, the snake imparted tine chaleiir 

 ires notable when he touched it. Many times, in taking up 

 a lizard from a sunny rock in summer, it really has briile les 

 doigts} The old fable about salamanders living m fire 

 no doubt originates in the fact of reptiles loving heat 

 as they do. ]\Iany pages might be filled with instances 



^ Dumeril et Dibron, tome vi. p. 1S4. 



