SNAKES 101 



the animal by the tail and also by the neck, it 

 cannot coil over the hand and thus put its stain 

 upon you, and you can carry it to where it can run 

 in long grass and make itself sweet again. When 

 I find my hand does smell a little I disguise it in 

 horse mint before and after washing, and the smell 

 is soon gone. The snake does not readily emit the 

 smell again, and it soon grows so tame as to have 

 no desire to use this unpleasant means of defence. 



Holding my snake by tail and neck I cannot 

 get it quite straight, though nearly enough so to 

 measure it by a stick and find it more than three 

 feet long. I find that the grass snake rapidly 

 reaches this length. The great proportion of those 

 you find in spring are as long, and few of them, 

 big of girth as they may be, exceed three feet six, 

 though I am prepared to find the one by the water 

 hole in the Upper Orchard nearly five feet long. 



Now see how difficult it is to hold a snake by the 

 tail. If it is upon the ground it will very quickly 

 get a hitch round some stick, and then you cannot 

 pull it back. The big scales are pointed behind 

 like the gills of the fish called ' miller's thumb.' 

 I regret to say that I have seen a snake torn in 

 half by its would-be captor when it had got half 

 its length into a hole. I must drop the tail of this 

 fellow, take it by the head and draw it through its 

 entanglement right foot foremost. It comes that 

 way as smooth as milk. 



It is scarcely easier to hold him in the air. Every 

 snake you catch has the same untaught trick of 



