124 PHOTOGRAPHY FOR NATURALISTS. 



gently directed into the proper channels. The big 

 otter of such and such year will be once more 

 summoned from oblivion by Gaffer So-and-so. Not 

 to be outdone, his grandson will expatiate on the size 

 and ferocity of the otter of a year back, and shortly the 

 reminiscences, not necessarily of otters, but of other 

 strange and fearsome beasts, will come as near in point 

 of time as the preceding week. 



The stranger in search of information must not 

 allow himself to be nonplussed by unfamiliar names of 

 animals, expressed in an unfamiliar dialect. Above 

 all he must beware of endeavouring to correct his com- 

 pany. If a weasel is known as a kane, kine, or koine, 

 that is its name, and that the stranger should call it a 

 weasel merely shows the stranger's ignorance, for a 

 weasel is something which is longer, or shorter, or 

 darker, or lighter, as the case may be. Recently, the 

 writer's curiosity was considerably aroused by the dis- 

 cussion turning on " deaf" adders, whose bite, it was 

 asserted, was of a peculiarly deadly nature. The 

 common adder had already been mentioned, and a fund 

 of information from those u as used to ketch 'em boy- 

 like " had been forthcoming. All of it had been 

 interesting, most of it plausible, and but little of it text- 

 book. Red adders and black adders had been con- 

 sidered, and the vexed question of the adders swallow- 

 ing their young had fairly divided the house. The 

 deaf adder, though obviously familiar to the audience, 

 was something new to the writer. It turned out to be 

 the common slow-worm. The writer refrained from 



