THE GRASS SNAKE AND THE SMOOTH SNAKE 585 



blotchings 



which 

 transverse bars, 



sometimes 

 hut never 



rows of 

 coalesce into 

 form a zigzag. 



In a fresh skin the Smooth Snake is a 

 very handsome reptile, his ground colour 

 being steel-grey and his spots a darker 

 shade of the same. It may interest 

 those of my readers who are photographers 

 to know that soft bromide prints from my 

 negatives of the Smooth Snake afford a 



Smooth Snake. In the Grass Snake the 

 same head plates are contiguous, but 

 the supra-oculars are proportionately 

 larger, and the nasals proportionately 

 smaller, than the supra-oculars and nasals 

 of the Smooth Snake. 



An additional distinction from the Adder 

 is afforded by the shai)e of the pupil of 

 the eye. In the Adder this is a vertical 

 slit, in the Smooth Snake it is a circle. 



A GRASS SNAKE WITH A FROG IN ITS GULLET. 



The Sullet extends from the ring round the snake's neck to the top of the curve in its body between the two large 

 stones. Its enormous distension can be judged from the fact that the scales on it are separated from 

 one another. One of the frog's fore-legs can be tracad between the snake's jaws. 



close approximation to natural colouring. 

 On an old skin the markings are indis- 

 tinguishable and the general tint is much 

 browner. The head plates of the Smooth 

 Snake, which can be well seen in the 

 photograph on page 581, are proportion- 

 ately larger than those of the Adder, and 

 are distinguished from them by the fact 

 that the " frontal " in the centre, the 

 " parietals " just behind it, the " nasals " 

 in front of it, and the "supra-oculars" 

 on either side, have their boundaries 

 strictly contiguous. In the Adder these 

 pre-eminent plates are generally separated 

 from each other by smaller ones, so that 

 the total number of plates on the head 

 appears to be much greater than in the 



The credit of first discovering the 

 Smooth Snake in England belongs to Mr. 

 Frederick Bond, who secured a specimen 

 when in company with the Rev. O. Pickard- 

 Cambridge in June, 1853. Since that 

 time the records have been spasmodic in 

 character. In some years the snake 

 appears to have been comparatively 

 common, then a long gap ensues ; then 

 it turns up again. A correspondent 

 writing to Knowledge (September 4th, 

 1885) refers to two in his keeping which 

 had been captured in Suffolk. This 

 appears to be the only instance of their 

 occurrence outside the heath-land of 

 Dorsetshire, Berkshire, Hampshire and 

 Surrey. 



