210 



SNAKES. 



this snake prefers rocky, or at least stony districts abundantly covered with 

 bushes; but in Schlangenbad, the only German locality where it is found in 

 any numbers, old walls are its favourite resorts. As it feeds chiefly on voles 

 and mice, it is a decided benefactor to the agriculturist and gardener. It also 

 consumes, however, a certain number of lizards, as well as such birds as it can 

 contrive to capture, and occasionally plunders a nest and sucks the eggs. It is 



^ESCULAPIAN SNAKE (^ nat. size.) 



very fond of climbing bushes, and low boughs or stumps of trees, as represented 

 in our illustration ; and in thick forests will go from bough to bough, and then 

 from tree to tree without descending to the ground. Indeed, it is such an adept in 

 climbing, that it frequently captures swift-running lizards on the stems of trees. 



Another South European species is the four-lined, or leopard-snake (0. leopar- 

 dinus). Remarkable for the beauty of its coloration, which, however, is subject to 

 great individual variation, this snake attains a length of about a yard, and differs 

 from all its congeners in the absence of a lower preocular shield on the head, and the 



