A Cold-blooded Race. 47 



themselves on the walls of Pompeii, or bask on the 

 grassy slopes of Bavarian hay fields, but still graceful, 

 agile little creatures. 



And there is the slow-worm a lizard without legs, 

 in his youth an especially charming object, with his 

 golden-brown coat and black dorsal line. 



We hardly think of ranking the turtle among our 

 fauna, though now and then one of these burly 

 monsters has drifted by mistake into British waters. 

 One which came ashore in Dorset not long ago, 

 weighing nearly seven hundredweight, may have been 

 washed overboard from a vessel. 



That the little water-tortoise of the south was once 

 an inhabitant of our fens, empty shells remain to 

 testify. 



But snakes are our most important reptiles. 



The occurrence of a ' new ' snake in Hampshire, 

 some years ago, attracted no little attention. It was 

 the Coronella Icevis, a common German species. It is 

 still met with occasionally along our southern coast. 

 The Rev. J. G. Wood considered it slightly venomous ; 

 but Buckland held the contrary view. 



This snake, it may be observed in passing, is the 

 only species found in Malta ; and it is said, moreover, 

 to be the only snake that can hold on by its teeth a 

 very interesting fact when taken in connection with 

 Luke's account of the beast that hung on Paul's hand, 

 remembering, too, that the word ' venomous ' does 

 not occur in the Greek text, but was supplied by the 



