Snake on the Roof. 337 
hue, and it has when fresh an appearance as if varnished 
—meaning not the brown colour of varnish, but the 
smoothness. A thin transparent film represents the 
eyes, so that the country folk say the snake skins his 
own eyes. 
A forked stick is the best thing to catch a snake 
with: the fork pins the head to the ground without 
doing any injury. If held up by the tail—that is the 
way the-country lads carry them—the snake will not 
let its head hang down, but holds it up as far as pos- 
sible: he does not, however, seem able to crawl up 
himself, so to say ; he is helpless in that position. If 
he is allowed to touch the arm he immediately coils 
round it. A snake is sometimes found on the roofs 
of cottages. The roof in such cases is low, and con- 
nected by a mass of ivy with the ground, overgrown 
too with moss and weeds. 
The mowers, who sleep a good deal under the 
hedges, have a tradition that a snake will sometimes 
crawl down a man’s throat if he sleeps on the ground 
with his mouth open. There is also a superstition 
among the haymakers of snakes having been bred in 
the stomachs of human beings, from drinking out of 
ponds or streams frequented by water snakes. Such 
snakes—green, and in every respect like the field 
snake—have, according to them, been vomited by the 
unfortunate persons afflicted with this strange calamity. 
It is curious to note in connection with this supersti- 
tion the ignorance of the real habits of these creatures 
Z 
