32 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
home, and I fondly hoped to see it again many 
times. But it was not there when I called on many 
successive days—neither serpent nor night-jar; but 
though we three shall meet no more, I remember 
the finding of that adder as one of the loveliest 
experiences I have met with during all the years I 
have spent in conversing with wild animals. 
