506 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
mole-catcher, Currie, tells me he saw one that was killed 
on the road near Crosswoodhill toll five or six years ago. 
In the Bathgate district I have reason to believe adders 
were, at one time, not uncommon, but I have not heard of 
any recent occurrence there. Mr Maxwell Durham of Bog- 
head, near Bathgate, tells me, that between thirty and forty 
years ago, his father, the late Mr Durham Weir, used to 
see them now and again when shooting on Barbauchlaw and 
other little moors in that neighbourhood. Seven young 
ones “that came out of the mouth of an adder, which he 
shot,” are still, with the head of the old one, preserved in a 
bottle at Boghead. The belief in young adders seeking 
safety from danger in the stomachs of their mothers is, as 
most of you are no doubt aware, wide-spread; but, like the 
stories of toads embedded in the solid rocks, the fact (if it 
be one) has still to be proved. 
On the south side of the Pentlands we know from Neill 
(“Gentle Shepherd,” 1808 ed., p. 273) that the adder in- 
habited Harlaw Muir in the beginning of the present cen- 
tury. On the adjoining extensive moor of Auchincorth, with 
which I was very familiar twenty to thirty years ago, and 
have often visited since, I have been told it still exists, 
which I do not doubt, but its numbers must be very limited, 
for in the course of my many rambles over the ground I 
have never come across one dead or alive. A few miles nearer 
West Linton it has been noted by Mr T. G. Laidlaw, but very 
rarely, the only example he has actually seen being a dead one 
lying on the road near Coalyburn, about twenty years ago. 
As the last-mentioned locality takes us into Peeblesshire, 
it may be well to note here what is recorded of the species 
in “Chambers’s History” of that county. The Viper or 
Adder, we are there told, was then (1864) common; “but 
whilst it is comparatively plentiful in some places, in others 
it is never seen, whilst there is no apparent difference in 
the localities themselves. Thus, it is not unfrequent in 
some parts of the parish of Traquair, but is almost unknown 
on the northern side of the Tweed, in the parish of Inner- 
leithen.” Mr hk. 8. Anderson informs me that a large 
example was killed in the ‘schoolhouse garden at Tweedsmuir 
