26 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



flat head and pressing it with my thumb, I pulled 

 the body straight and succeeded in getting the 

 exact length. It was twenty-eight inches. The 

 biggest adder I had hitherto found was twenty-five 

 and a half ; this was in the New Forest, in the 

 wildest part, where it is most thinly inhabited and 

 adders are most abundant. None of the other 

 biggest adders I had measured before and since 

 exceeded twenty-four inches. 



We see that the adder, when we come to measure 

 it, is not a big snake ; it looks bigger than it is, 

 partly on account of its strange conspicuous colour- 

 ing, with the zigzag shape of the band, and its 

 reputation as a dangerous serpent ; this makes an 

 adder two feet long look actually bigger than the 

 grass-snake of three feet the size to which this 

 snake usually grows. 



In a minute or two my adder recovered from the 

 effects of the tap on his head and was permitted to 

 glide away into the furze bushes. And leaving the 

 spot I went on, but had not gone forty yards 

 before catching sight of another adder lying coiled 

 up. I stopped to look at it, then slowly advanced 

 to within about five feet of it, and there remained 

 standing still, just to see whether or not my presence 

 so close to it would affect it in any way. Presently, 

 hearing a shout, I looked up and saw two horsemen 

 coming up over the down in front of me. They 

 pulled up and sat staring down at me a big man 

 on a big horse, and a rather small man on a small 

 horse. The big man was the shooting tenant, and 



