188 THE MOOK AND THE LOCH. 



girth, and in its belly was a full-grown rat ! As I could not 

 at first swallow the rat myself, I took the trouble to verify, as 

 far as testimony could verify, the gluttonous feat of this python, 

 and found that I had been correctly informed. 



A still more incredible story of a Mull adder I give on my 

 own authority. The reptile was basking close to a wall, when 

 my son's tutor (now minister of Kirkliston) threw a large 

 stone, and fairly halved it. The head and shoulders wriggled 

 into the wall, and he brought the tail to me. Three days 

 after, he found the head half at the same spot hale and hearty, 

 and when attacked, it hissed and bit his stick fiercely. This 

 adder was severed about the centre, head and tail ends being 

 of about equal length. So prolific in adders was Mull, that 

 we have found them in winter coiled up in a heather-bush, no 

 doubt surprised and frozen to death by one of those pinching 

 night-frosts which often succeed the sunny butterfly-days of 

 early winter. 



The only serpent reptile I have detected in Bute is the 

 familiar slow-worm. It is by no means plentiful here, 

 although in Mull it is equally numerous with the adders. The 

 rough ground of North Bute being well adapted to furnish food 

 and shelter for reptiles, and the climate to foster them, why 

 there are no adders and few blind-worms I do not pretend to 

 guess. 



The stoat abounds in Bute quite as much as in Mull, but 

 the common weasel I have never seen but once. 1 A party of 

 us surrounded and killed the creature on a January day, where 

 it had taken refuge under a bush. It proved to be a beautiful 

 example of the " cane " or " mouse-killer," considered a distinct 

 species by many English gamekeepers. My own impression 

 used to be that these mouse-killers are only the young of the 

 common weasel, but I am now inclined to accord them the 

 third class of our native weasels. My tiny specimen is of 



1 Since writing the above I have twice detected full-grown specimens of the 

 common weasel in Bute. 



