32 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



home, and I fondly hoped to see it again many 

 times. But it was not there when I called on many 

 successive days neither serpent nor night- jar ; but 

 though we three shall meet no more, I remember 

 the finding of that adder as one of the loveliest 

 experiences I have met with during all the years I 

 have spent in conversing with wild animals. 



