10 THE RING OF NATURE 



man knows how to find the place where the grass 

 snake or adder is certain to be. We could find 

 them now by grubbing up a sufficiency of the hazel 

 stools in the wood, the grass snakes in a tangle 

 perhaps amounting to dozens, and the vipers 

 mostly solitary. 



For some reason, that other sun-lover, the slow 

 worm, does occasionally turn in its winter bed, and 

 come sliding forth even with frost on the ground. 

 At any rate I have found them more than once 

 dead on the road in the middle of the winter. All 

 the chilly-blooded tribe are liable to be paralysed 

 by the cold, and there are many degrees between 

 the absolute torpor of a happy sleep and the light- 

 ning speed with which a midsummer lizard darts 

 through the wild thyme when disturbed in its 

 sun-bath or insect-hunt. 



The lizards proper lie deep, and are seldom en- 

 countered till it is their time to come above ground 

 again, but a cold, shrivelled newt is often found 

 not very deep in a dry stone wall or under some 

 stone or timber balk on the ground. The great- 

 crested newt has lost all the frills that make him 

 so handsome in the summer pond and beyond that ; 

 his fat sides have sunk to less than half their proper 

 girth. All the water is dried out of him, and his 

 lively sliminess has turned to a sort of hard india- 

 rubber. I have even found him as stiff as a stick, 

 from which state, no doubt, he accomplishes the 

 miracle of resurrection. In fact, I can cite a case 

 even stronger than that. 



