NO MAN'S LAND. 185 



No Man's Land. In no marsh or swamp have I ever 

 been so severely punished as in the Surrey thickets of 

 these table-lands. 



Mice of all kinds abound, providing food for the 

 vipers, or adders as they call them here, which 

 abound. In fact, it is a paradise for them. I have 

 handled our British reptiles — freshly caught — and 

 examined them minutely with impunity. In fact, I 

 may boast of as near an acquaintance with them, 

 perhaps, as any man, and I have often wondered at 

 the measurements of snakes and vipers given in the 

 published works of a celebrated authority on the sub- 

 ject which I have by me. He quotes much from the 

 New Forest point of view, and I can only conclude 

 that the reptiles must be small in that district ; for I 

 have caught with my bare hands vipers by the side 

 of which those figured and described in his book 

 would look like puff-adders. The same fact struck 

 me on the last visit I paid to the reptile-house at the 

 Zoological Gardens. In the district referred to in 

 this paper they are, when full-grown, as thick and 

 long as those described by Mr John Colquhoun in 

 ' The Moor and the Loch,' as killed or captured by 

 him on the shores of his own mountain lochs. Like 



