106 THE RING OF NATURE 



it up and seized by the middle a snake about two 

 feet long, of an ash-grey colour with a row of 

 darker lozenges down its back. The back of its 

 head was scored with a black ' x ' and a mark 

 which a more gruesome imagination than mine 

 would have called a skull above the crossbones. 

 There was no golden ring at the back of its head, 

 but I, calling upon an imperfect memory, thought 

 that I must have heard that one sex of the grass 

 snake was without this ornament. And as the 

 snake instead of being squat and fat, as writers 

 say the adder is, was slim and elegant, I took it 

 to belong to a harmless species. So I allowed it 

 to twine itself in and out of my fingers, and even 

 to push out its tongue against my cheek. It is 

 this flickering tongue of forked black velvet that 

 many people insist on calling the snake's fang. 



I lodged my snake in an oak that the ivy had 

 climbed, and as it coiled there took its photograph. 

 It seemed to have black eyes looking in rapture 

 to the sky, and as I peered at them and tried 

 to get them to look at me I was aware of another 

 pair beneath them that glared at me like garnets. 

 The black eyes seen first are sham ones, and I 

 thought that here was an excellent apparatus for 

 fascinating small creatures. 



The snake, tired of being teased and photo- 

 graphed, now proceeded to climb the tree, and 

 with the aid of the ivy strands it went up very 

 well. It could have reached, no doubt, the 

 chaffinch's nest that I marked up there and 



