G+ BRITISH SERPENTS. 
which bears on the point of their Inbernating in 
clusters: “A farmer I knew well told ine that some 
woodmen in Reinden Wood, Swingtield (Kent), were 
in mid-winter excavating under the edge of a gravel 
pit (1 believe to dig out a rabbit), when they came 
upon an enormous mass of adders in a semi-dormant 
state. He said there were hundreds coiled up to- 
gether! At the time I did not think much of it, and 
expressed my incredulity, but he assured me that 
it was so. That they do at times congregate in con- 
siderable numbers I quite believe. When I was a 
boy I used to spend a few days sometimes at a farm 
where there was a sloping bank. This had at one 
time been a cottage garden, but the cottage having 
been converted into a ‘hopoust, the garden was 
allowed to drop into an overgrown waste of brambles 
and Jone erass, tenanted by rabbits and adders. On 
one oceasion the farm-servants decided to devote 
the Sunday afternoon to an adder-hunt in this spot. 
Each one, armed with a stout stick, set to work, when 
the adders quickly swarmed round them in such 
numbers that they completely drove the men off the 
field. They struck about im all directions for a minute 
or two, and then fairly had to make a bolt for it, 
and not one of them could be prevailed upon to enter 
the enclosure again, although they were a dare-devil 
lot.” Even supposing that the farmer exaggerated the 
numbers a little, there is no doubt that the men did 
come across a very large conerevation of adders hiber- 
