THE SMOOTH SNAKE. 59 



Their skins are of a brownish-black colour, and 

 marked like their mother's, only that these mark- 

 ings are not yet well developed. The scales on 

 the under parts of their bodies are of a beautiful 

 pale glittering blue; altogether they are real 

 little beauties." * Evidently the writer of these 

 lines looked upon his pets with the eyes of a con- 

 noisseur, and had they been anything else but 

 snakes no doubt the ladies would have made a 

 rush at him to have secured pets to ornament 

 their boudoirs. Amongst the interesting com- 

 munications which appeared at the time relative 

 to the Smooth Snake, was one from Dr. Giinther, 

 our best authority in serpent lore. " A large 

 male specimen of this snake," he says, ec which I 

 kept for a long time on account of its tameness, 

 fed exclusively on lizards, never on mice or frogs. 

 After having fed it for some time with ordinary- 

 sized lizards, proportionate to the size of the 

 snake, I brought a very large specimen of Lacerta 

 acfilis to its cage, in order to try the strength of 

 the snake. The lizard was immediately seized ; 

 but after a long fight, during which the lizard 

 several times appeared to be entangled in the 

 writhings of the snake, always managing, how- 

 ever, to free its head which had been seized by 

 the snake, the latter changed the point of attack, 



* The Field, October, 1862. 



