At Home with Wild Nature 



When I was a boy a farmer asked me to catch a 

 trout about five inches in length and bring it along alive. 

 This was a simple task to a lad who had made a science 

 of tickling wee fishes in every beck in the neighbour- 

 hood, and I took jlong the troutlet in a bucket of water, 

 curious to know why the man had made such a request. 

 To my amazement and horror I saw the unfortunate fish 

 placed tail first in a hornful of water and poured down 

 the throat of a heifer "that wouldn't breed." She 

 ultimately did so, but her owner tried in vain to con- 

 vince me that the troutlet was responsible. 



All kinds of strange and wonderful superstitions 

 have sprung up concerning the life-history of the adder 

 or viper, and some of them it is to be feared still pre- 

 vail. Old farmers in the Yorkshire dales used to tell me 

 that if an adder were caught during the day and its 

 body cut to pieces, such was the marvellous vitality of 

 the reptile, that at sundown the different sections would 

 come together again, coalesce, and the reptile would 

 glide away little the worse for its unpleasant experience. 



In ancient times people seriously believed that if you 

 were fortunate enough to kill the first adder you saw, in 

 after life all your enemies would fall before you like 

 grass before a scythe. I killed the first viper I ever 

 saw, but as the singularly small number of enemies I 

 have ever had in my life are still standing, when they are 

 not emulating the reptile under consideration, the belief 

 can safely be dismissed as " an old wife's tale." 



The slough, or discarded skin, of the adder sus- 

 pended from a beam in the house was, in the days of un- 



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