THE COMING OF SPRING 269 



spent months in the place without seeing a frog, now 

 following the stream you could count hundreds at 

 their revels in the water, brown and olive frogs, clay 

 colour, yellow and old gold, and some strangely 

 marked with black and brown on a pale ground. 

 These congregations which begin to form before 

 March are continued until May. 



Adders, seen occasionally on warm days in Febru- 

 ary, are common enough in March and April if one 

 knows how to find them. Here, at two spots within 

 half a mile of each other, I found two of the most 

 singular and beautifully coloured adders I had ever 

 seen. One was of so pale a grey in its ground colour 

 as to appear white at a little distance ; the other was 

 perfectly white, the zigzag band intensely black with 

 a narrow border of delicate buff. I turned him over 

 expecting to find some curious variation in the colour 

 of the belly, and was disappointed to find it the usual 

 dark blue ; but I was so charmed with this rare 

 Dominican adder that I kept it half an hour, carrying 

 it to a piece of level green turf for the pleasure of 

 watching the sinuous movements of so strange a 

 serpent over the ground before I finally let it go into 

 hiding among the bushes. 



After you have seen and heard the wheatears you 

 begin to listen in the furze and thorn grown bottoms 

 for that bright, airy, tender, running, rippling little 

 melody of the willow-wren, which should come next, 

 and is so universal in England, and it will surprise 

 you to hear the chiffchaff before him, for in this 

 treeless district the species so abundant everywhere 



