108 THE RING OF NATURE 



never seen it wild. Once I saw it in a cage at the 

 Crystal Palace, where it was labelled as a viper. 

 It is slightly like that reptile, being in browns and 

 greys instead of the olive green of the grass snake, 

 but the double row of dots down its back have not 

 run into the well-known zig-zag pattern. Neither 

 has it the skull and crossbones nor other marking 

 on the top of its head. 



If you want a still more harmless ' snake ' than 

 the grass snake and without its objectionable 

 smell, look any day on this raised bank and, if 

 necessary, turn a stone or two, when you will find 

 slow-worms or blind-worms like models in bronze 

 come to life. Make bracelets of them and let them 

 press in and out among your fingers. If they be 

 not overfull of the slugs they ate overnight they 

 will do you no offence as to harm, it is completely 

 beyond their power. You tell me, of course, that 

 they are not snakes, the chief distinguishing point 

 being that they have eyelids that open and shut. 

 They belong to the family of the lizards that you 

 can see and often catch as they scuttle for safety 

 under the gorse bushes on the common. Preferring 

 a grovelling to a scampering life, the slow-worm 

 has lost its legs. Why slow-worm ? why blind- 

 worm ? The first no doubt because, having lost 

 its legs and not having the facilities for walking 

 on its ribs that the snake has, it ought to be slow. 

 On a bare surface it is slow, but it can push itself 

 about among grass and small stones with no mean 

 speed. Blind perhaps because, by comparison 



