HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 31 
was my surprise and delight at finding its under- 
surface of a colour or “shade” I had never previ- 
ously seen—the lovely blue I have mentioned. 
There was no break in the colour; every belly- 
plate from the neck to the tip of the tail was of a 
uniform exquisite turquoise blue, or considering 
that turquoise blues vary in depth and purity, it 
would be more exact to describe the colour as 
most like that of the forget-me-not, but being 
enamelled, it reminded me rather of the most 
exquisite blue one has seen on some priceless piece 
of old Chinese pottery. I think that if some 
famous aged artist of the great period, a worshipper 
of colour whose life had been spent in the long 
endeavour to capture and make permanent the 
most exquisite fleeting tints in Nature, had seen 
the blue on that adder he would have been over- 
come at the same time with rapture and despair. 
And I think, too, that if Mother Nature in turning 
out this ophidian had muddled things, as she is apt 
to do occasionally, and had reversed the position 
of the colours, putting the tawny yellow and 
black zigzag band on the belly and the blue 
above, the sight of the creature would have given 
rise to a New Forest myth. It would have been 
spread abroad that an angelic being had appeared 
in those parts in the form of a serpent but in its 
natural celestial colour. 
After keeping it a long time in my hand, I 
released it reluctantly, and saw it steal away into 
the cavity at the roots of the oak. Here was its 
