APPENDIX ; NOS. XXXIII.—XXXIV. 33 
illiterate shepherd of Hougham, near Dover: he met me catching 
Vipers, and, on my entering into conversation with him, he volun- 
teered—without any allusion of mine—to tell this curious story. 
One day his father came suddenly upon a Viper surrounded by her 
young: she opened her mouth and they all ran down her throat: 
he killed her, and leaving her on the ground, propped her mouth 
open between two pieces of stick ; presently the young ones crawled 
out: on the slightest alarm they retreated back again,—and this 
they did repeatedly for several days, during which time many people 
came to see it. The young which White of Selborne cut out of the 
old female, and which immediately threw themselves into attitudes 
of defiance, had probably not then seen the daylight for the first 
time. Mr. Bell, in a note in Bennett’s edition of White’s 
‘ Selborne’ [p. 102], mentions the wide-spread belief in this alleged 
habit of the Viper ; but appears to consider the fact not proved. 
Accounts of similar habits in foreign viviparous Snakes, common 
report, and, above all, Mr. Percival’s observation, leave no doubt in 
my mind about the matter. 
3 Roxburgh Terrace, Edinburgh. 
XXXIV. 
Tue ELK FORMERLY IN SCOTLAND). 
[‘Zoologist,’ vii. (1849) p. 2381.] 
Sir Water Scorr was aware of the former existence of the Elk in 
this country, as appears from the following lines :— 
“‘ Here grins the wolf as when he died. 
And there the wild cat’s brindled hide, 
The frontlet of the elk adorns 
Or mantles o’er the bison’s horns.” 
Lady of the Lake, Canto i. 27. 
They occur in the description of the stronghold of the Douglas, in 
Loch Katrine. I have no means of ascertaining whether Sir Walter 
had any other authority for introducing the Elk than the evidence 
of its horns, dug up more than once in Scotland. He perhaps would 
say, that even if he had no kind of proof of the living EIk so late as 
the time of James V., its horns might be nailed up in the castles of 
the nobility, just asthe antlers of the Great Irish Deer are in 
England or Ireland at the present day. 
3 Roxburgh Terrace, Edinburgh, 
January 8, 1849. 
1 (See No. XXIX.—Ep.] 
PART IV. 0 
