2564 



SCALED REPTILES 



swallowed head-foremost. ' ' As a rule, the frog remains alive during the swallow- 

 ing process, and it may sometimes be heard to croak when buried in the stomach of 

 its captor, while instances are on record where a frog has returned after being thus 

 entombed. When swimming, the ringed snake carries its head and neck raised 

 above the surface of the water. The skin, as in the case of other serpents, is shed 

 several times during the year, and is drawn off turned inside out, so that the lenses 

 covering the eye appear concave instead of convex. Previous to changing its coat, the 

 reptile becomes almost if not completely blind, and evidently ill at ease, and the change 



VIPERINE AND TESSELATED SNAKES. 



(Two-fifths natural size.) 



is accomplished by the old skin bursting at the neck, and being pulled off by the 

 owner wriggling its body between brushwood or dense herbage. Some sixteen to 

 twenty eggs are annually deposited by the female of the ringed snake, these being 

 attached together by a viscid substance. Although they are sometimes hatched 

 solely by the heat of the sun, at other times the process of development is hastened 

 by their being placed in a heap of decaying vegetable matter or manure. When the 

 cold of autumn makes itself felt, this species retires for the winter, passing its time 

 in a state of torpor ensconced in some hole in a hedge bank, under the roots of 



