NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 73 



The serpent kind eat, I believe, but once in a year ; or, 

 rather, but only just at one season of the year. Country 

 people talk much of a water-snake, but, I am pretty sure, 

 without any reason ; for the common snake (coluber natrix) 

 delights much to sport in the water, perhaps with a view to 

 procure frogs and other food. 



I cannot well guess how you are to make out your 

 twelve species of reptiles, unless it be by the various species, 

 or rather varieties, of our lacerti, of which Ray enumerates 

 five. I have not had opportunity of ascertaining these ; 

 but remember well to have seen, formerly, several beautiful 

 green lacerti on the sunny sand-banks near Farnham, in 

 Surrey ; and Ray admits there are such in Ireland. 1 



myself or by my friends, Mr. Lydekker, Mr. R. I. Pocock, and other colleagues 

 in the Natural History Museum, and among the best of these articles was one 

 contributed by my friend Mr. Pickard-Cambridge, an excellent field -naturalist, 

 who would have none of the legend of the viper providing in its own body a 

 refuge for its little ones. I received a letter in reply (which, to my great regret, 

 I cannot at the moment lay hands upon) from a correspondent who averred that 

 he had witnessed the fact himself. " Brusher " Mills, the well-known snake- 

 catcher of the New Forest, affirms that the young vipers do take refuge in the 

 mouth of the mother (see Wide World Magazine for Oct. 1899, p. 153), and in 

 the face of so much independent testimony it seems scarcely possible to doubt 

 that the young are received into the old viper's oesophagus on the approach of 

 danger. [R. B. S.] 



1 Gilbert White never pretended to have more than a passing knowledge of 

 Reptiles and Fishes, and he laments his want of opportunity. Professor Bell is 

 doubtless right when he credits him with a "strong prejudice" against Reptilia 

 and Amphibia, but many people, even at the present day, are similarly prejudiced. 

 Bell says that this inherent dislike " prevented him from either acquiring a technical 

 knowledge of the different species, or of observing their habits and physiology." 

 Gilbert White was such a thorough field-naturalist that I feel sure that he would 

 have studied the life-history of any animal which came within his power of obser- 

 vation, but he was a horticulturist and an ornithologist first of all, and a very busy 

 man at all times, so that the absence of detailed notes on the habits of Reptilia 

 may actually have arisen from lack of opportunity to study the ways of animals, to 

 which he may also have entertained a natural antipathy. 



The following note of Professor Bell's is of great interest : " The species 

 which I have myself seen at Selborne are the following : of Reptilia, the little 

 viviparous lizard, Zootoca vivipara, which is common on the sandy heath of 

 Wolmer Forest; the blind-worm, Anguis fragilis ; the common snake, Natrix 

 torquata ; the viper, Pelias bents ; of Amphibia, the common frog, Rana tempor- 

 aria ; the common toad, Bitfo vulgaris ; the natter-jack, Bufo calamita ; the 

 warty newt, Triton cristatus ; the common smooth newt, Lissotriton punctatus ; 

 the palmated smooth newt, L issotriton palmipes. It is unnecessary now, and in 



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