80 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



a better artist placed by his pious me when going for a stroll on ground 

 widow in the beautiful parish church, abounding in adders and have known 

 where you can see him among angelic at once from their way of walking in 

 figures surrounded by a company of an unaccustomed place that the quest 

 birds and beasts and reptiles of many would prove an idle one. Their light- 

 shapes and colours, and at the margins est, most cautious tread would alarm 

 the familiar words He prayeth best and send into hiding every adder a 

 who loveth lest, etc. dozen or twenty yards in advance of us. 

 Let us return to our quest. The In spring the adders are most alert 

 trouble is when you have arrived at and shyest : later in the season some 

 the adder haunt to find the adder, adders, as a rule the females, become 

 A man may spend years, even a life- sluggish and do not slip quickly away 

 time, without seeing one. Some time when approached ; but in summer 

 ago I talked to an aged shepherd the herbage is apt to hide them and 

 whose flock fed in a wide furze-grown they lie more in the shade than in 

 hollow in the South Downs where March, April and the early part of May. 

 adders were not uncommon. He told In spring you must go alone and 

 me he had been shepherding forty softly, but you need not fear to whistle 

 years in that place and during the and sing, or even to shout, for the 

 entire period had found three adders ! adder is deaf and cannot hear you ; 

 If he had said 300 I should not have on the other hand his body is sensitive 

 been surprised. The man on the soil in an extraordinary degree to earth 

 does not often see an adder because vibrations, and the ordinary tread of 

 for one thing he does not look for it, even a very light man will disturb him 

 and still more because of the heavy at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards, 

 boots he wears with which he pounds That sense of the adder which has 

 the earth like a dray-horse with its no special organ yet may serve better 

 ponderous iron-shod hoofs. Even men than vision, hearing, smell, and touch 

 who walk lightly and wear light foot- together, is of the greatest importance 

 gear make as a rule an amazing noise to it, since to a creature that lies and 

 in walking over dry heathy places progresses prone on the ground and 

 with brittle sticks and dry vegetable has a long brittle backbone, the heavy 

 matter covering the ground. I have mammalian foot is one of the greatest 

 had persons thrust their company on dangers to its life. 



