HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 27 
the shout was evidently meant for me, but I took 
no notice. I kept my eyes on my adder, and soon 
the two horsemen came down at a gallop to me, 
and of course before they were fifty yards from me, 
the thunder of the hoofs had sent the creature into 
hiding. Sitting on their horses they stared in angry 
silence at me, and finding I had to speak first, I 
apologised for being in the preserve, and said the 
keeper, knowing me to be a harmless naturalist, 
had given me permission to come there to find a 
flower I was interested in—also an adder. What, 
he demanded, did I want with adders? Just to 
see them, I said; I had found one and was watch- 
ing it when his approach had driven it away. I 
then added that adders were exceedingly abundant 
on this land of his, that I had just found and 
measured one which was twenty-eight inches long 
—the biggest adder I had ever found. 
/ “When is it?—let’s see it!” shouted both men, 
‘and I had to tell them that I had released it, and 
it had gone into a bush about forty yards from 
where we stood. 
They stared at me, then exchanged glances, then 
the big man asked me if I meant what I had said— 
if I had actually caught a big adder only to release 
it unharmed? 
That, I said, was what I had done. 
“Then you did wrong,’ almost yelled the 
second man. “To catch and release an adder that 
might bite and kill some one any day—I consider it 
a crime.” 
