48 BRITISH SERPENTS, 
his kind permission to quote it. The following 
copious extracts are from the paper in question :— 
“Most people, I imagine, have been hitherto aware 
of only one other British serpent besides the adder, 
and that is the common or ringed snake. <A figure 
and general description, therefore, with a few addi- 
tional remarks on a now well-established third species 
of British serpent, may not, perhaps, be uninteresting 
to our members; more especially as its British habitat 
at present appears to be confined to the sandy heath 
districts of Dorsetshire and the adjoining county of 
Hampshire. 
“The first undoubted capture of this snake, Coro- 
nella levis oy smooth snake, in Britain, was in June 
1853, by Mr Frederick Bond, between Wimborne 
and Ringwood, on the borders of Parley Heath. I 
was present on that occasion entomologising with 
Mr Bond. We agreed that it was new to us, and, 
with httle doubt, new also to Britain. Mr Bond 
took the specimen with him to London, fully intend- 
ing to get if examined by the British Museum ex- 
perts; but amid the many distractions of the height 
of the entomological season it was merely put into 
spirit and subsequently forgotten, until the record 
of a specimen received at the British Museum from 
Bournemouth (where it was found by the Hon. Arthur 
Russell in 1859) appeared in the ‘ Zoologist,’ 1859 
(p. 6751). On reading this notice Mr Bond im- 
mediately recognised the species we had met with 
