THE EARLY SNAKE 35 



naturalists has an opportunity of becoming acquainted 

 with the viper. It is then that she lies about with 

 very little concern for the convenience of others, and 

 it is quite easy for careless people to tread on her and 

 get a particularly dangerous bite. 



It is idle to look to-day in every place where we 

 found our venomous snakes last June. It is only in 

 the warmest corners that much can be made of the 

 March sun-bath, even when the elements are so 

 propitious as on this Gossamer Day. Our best viper 

 holt is at the corner of a stony oat-field in the angle 

 of two of the dry walls of the country. Here, when 

 the oats were up in the field, the incurably dry corner 

 held nothing taller than shepherd's-purse, and was 

 decorated rather than covered by straggling scarlet 

 pimpernel. Then came the unploughed edge of turf, 

 with long, wiry grass that hid the snakes in their 

 retreat towards the complete fastness of the wall. 

 They took the sun in tumbled coils at the edge of the 

 long grass, or stretched luxuriously on the warm, 

 gravelly soil of the field. 



The place is barer now. The crop that succeeds 

 the oats has scarcely broken the ground, and the 

 pimpernel is unstraggling and without blossom. But 

 every little stone in the soil has absorbed its share of 

 sun, the walls are full of it and reflecting a surplus 

 on the favoured corner, and it is likely that the winter 

 retreat of the vipers is very near. And there, in a 

 kind of semi-circular nest, sleeps in tumbled coil 

 one of the six that daily took the sun here of June 

 mornings. 



It is, at this slow time of the year, an easy matter 

 to put a stick among his coils and throw him out into 



