16 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



imparted in any way. That which we seek is not 

 the viper, the subject of Fontana's monumental 

 work, the little rope of clay or dead flesh in the 

 British Museum, coiled in its bottle of spirits, and 

 labelled " Vipera beriLS, Linn." 



We seek the adder or nadder, that being 

 venerated of old and generator of the sacred 

 adder-stone of the Druids, and he dwells not in a 

 jar of alcohol in the still shade and equable tem- 

 perature of a museum. He is a lover of the sun, 

 and must be sought for after his winter sleep in 

 dry incult places, especially in open forest-lands, 

 stony hill - sides and furze - grown heaths and 

 commons. After a little training the adder-seeker 

 gets to know a viperish locality by its appearance. 

 It is, however, not necessary to go out at random 

 in search of a suitable hunting-ground, seeing that 

 all places haunted by adders are well known to 

 the people in the neighbourhood, who are only too 

 ready to give the information required. There are 

 no preservers of adders in the land, and so far as 

 I know there has been but one person in England 

 to preserve that beautiful and innocuous creature, 

 the ringed-snake. Can any one understand such 

 a hobby or taste? Certainly not that friend of 

 animals who pays sixpence for a dead snake. 

 He, the snake - saviour, our unknown little 

 Melampus, paid his village boys sixpence for every 

 one they brought to him alive and uninjured, and 

 to inspire confidence in them he would go with 

 half a dozen large snakes in his coat pockets into 



