THE CROWS 



may be seen, all that has escaped evaporation in 

 the shade. P'rorn one of these marshy spots I 

 once and once only observed a snipe rise, 

 and after wheeling round return and settle by 

 another. As the wiry grass becomes paler with 

 the fall of the year, the rushes, on the contrary, 

 from green become faintly yellow, and presently 

 brownish. Grey grass and brown rushes, dark 

 furze, and fern almost copper in hue from frost, 

 when lit up by a gleam of winter sunshine, form a 

 pleasant breadth of warm colour in the midst of 

 bare fields. 



After continuous showers in spring, lizards are 

 often found in the adjacent gardens, their dark 

 backs as they crawl over the patches being almost 

 exactly the tint of the moist earth. If touched, 

 the tail is immediately coiled, the body stiffens, and 

 the creature appears dead. They are popularly 

 supposed to come from the furze, which is also 

 believed to shelter adders. 



There is, indeed, scarcely a cover in Surrey and 

 Kent which is not said to have its adders ; the 

 gardeners employed at villas close to the metropolis 

 occasionally raise an alarm, and profess to have 

 seen a viper in the shrubberies, or the ivy, or under 

 an old piece of bast. Since so few can distinguish 

 at a glance between the common snake and the 

 adder it is as well not to press too closely upon any 



