202 



the neck, and being- pulled off by the owner wriggling its body between brushwood 

 or dense herbage. Some sixteen to twenty eggs are annually deposited by the 

 female of the ringed snake, these being attached together by a viscid substance. 

 Although they are somet lines hatched solely by the heat of the sun, at other times 

 tin 1 process of development is hastened by their being placed in a heap of decaying 

 vegetable matter or manure. When the cold of autumn makes itself felt, this 

 species retires for the winter, passing its time in a state of torpor ensconced in 

 some hole in a hedge-bank, under the roots of trees, or some such place, where it 



YIPEUIXE AND TESSELATEU SNAKES (:- ll.lt. size). 



remains till awakened by the returning warmth of spring. Xot unfrequently 

 si -vend snakes occupy the same hole for the winter, and occasionally a considerable 

 number have been, found coiled up together in a mass. 



Tesseiated and ""''ho preceding species, as already said, belongs to the typical 



Viperine Snakes. soc tion of the genus, in which the teeth of the hinder upper jawbone 

 do not exceed thirty in number, and are gradually enlarged towards tin; hinder 

 end of the series, while the eyes and nostrils are lateral, and the internasal shields 

 broadly truncated in front. As examples of the second section, in which, while the 

 number and characters of the teeth are similar, the small eyes and nostrils are 

 directed upwards and outwards, and the internasal shields usually much narrowed 



