62 BRITISH SERPENTS. 
For some years now I have tried to note this point 
in my own locality, with the result that the earliest 
date on which I have seen an adder in the spring has 
been on March 4. For three years in succession I 
have failed to find one before May—one year as late 
as May 16; but this is a sparsely populated district, 
and one might easily fail to hear of the adders moy- 
ing about for some time after they had finished their 
hibernation, and still more easily fail to come across a 
specimen. Considering that im the Monnow Valley 
we frequently have an early spring, I am inclined to 
think that the adders are not so late in making their 
appearance as my earliest note of the fact would indi- 
cate. I have never had the opportunity of comparing 
the different species of snakes in the same district as 
to their relative times of hibernating, as it so happens 
that the adder is sole representative of the Ophidia in 
that part of the country where I hibernate myself; so 
that I cannot express any opinion as to which of our 
three snakes is the first to retire or the last to re- 
appear. But it is obvious that such a comparison, to 
be an accurate test of their respective habit in this 
matter, must be made in a locality where all three 
British snakes are found. It would be dangerous to 
assume that because the adder retires in September in 
one district, and the ring snake in October in another 
locality, that therefore the adder’s period of hiber- 
nation is longer or begins sooner than that of the 
ring snake. The degree of torpor exhibited by the 
