THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 193 
grubbing up an old stump. Still more wonderful 
it is to witness a knot or twined mass of adders, 
not self-buried, semi-torpid, and of the temperature 
of the cold ground, but hot-blooded in the hot sun, 
active, hissing, swinging their tails. In a remote 
corner of this island there exists an extensive boggy 
heath where adders are still abundant, and grow 
black as the stagnant rushy pools, and the slime 
under the turf, which invites the foot with its 
velvety appearance, but is dangerous to tread upon. 
In this snaky heath-land, in the warm season, when 
the frenzy takes them, twenty or thirty or more 
adders are sometimes found twined together; they 
are discovered perhaps by some solitary pedestrian, 
cautiously picking his way, gun in hand, and the 
sight amazes and sends a sharp electric shock 
along his spinal cord. All at once he remembers 
his gun and discharges it into the middle of the 
living mass, to boast thereafter to the very end of 
his life of how he killed a score of adders at one 
shot. 
To witness this strange thing, and experience the 
peculiar sensation it gives, it is necessary to go far 
and to spend much time in seeking and waiting and 
watching. A bright spring morning in England no 
longer “craves wary walking,” as in the days of 
Elizabeth. Practically the serpent hardly exists 
for us, so seldom do we see it, so completely has it 
dropped out of our consciousness. But if we have | 
known the creature, at home or abroad, and wish 
in reading to recover the impression of a sweet 
