54 BRITISH SERPENTS. 
me from the way in which it hitched on to anything, 
and remained clinging until shaken off. When one 
considers also the fact that it is a common snake 
in Malta, one may possibly have an explanation of 
the ‘viper’ (Acts xxvii. 3) which came out of the 
firewood and fastened itself on to the hand of Paul 
after the shipwreck. It is wonderful the way in 
which the most innocuous reptiles are described with 
the Homeric epithet of « venomous snake.” 
In the ‘Surrey Magazine’ of May, June, and July 
1899, Mr Bryan Hook contributed three articles on 
the reptiles of that county. He is the first to record 
the smooth snake there, and the following quotation is 
from the paper in the June number of the county 
magaZziue i— 
“The smooth snake (Coronella austiiace )—perhaps 
the most interesting of the Surrey reptiles—is one 
which, I am told upon the best authority, I am the 
first to record as occurring in this county. 
“In general colour and appearance it so nearly 
resembles the unpopular viper that doubtless it is 
usually greeted with the same treatment; at any rate, 
such was the lot of the first one that came under my 
notice, the stock of my gun ending its career in a tuft 
of heather in which it had taken refuge. Tad it been 
in the open I should perhaps have recognised it, and 
then I should not have had the mortification of 
knowing that I had destroyed a rare and harmless 
reptile. 
