226 BRITISH SERPENTS. 
till I gel a spider, miss, and uf I can get if to crawl 
over the adder, it [ae., the adder] will get so angry 
that i will burst to bits direetly. However, the 
spider was obstinate, and refused to perform. The 
idea, it seems, is quite general in some of the dis- 
tricts about here.’—Frank Davies, Newcastle Emlyn, 
South Wales. 
Pigs eating adders.—It is said that the farmers 
near Clun Forest, Shropshire, when the adders became 
too numerous to be pleasant, used to turn out their 
pigs, which made short work of the adders by feed- 
ing on them. I have not been able to authenticate 
this from eyewitnesses, though I have been told that 
the farmers did adopt this curious plan. 
The idea is by no means novel, for Darwin in his 
‘Expressions of the Emotions’ states that “it is well 
known that pigs are employed in the United States 
to clear districts infested with rattlesnakes, which 
they do most effectually.” Dr R. Brown also 
stated in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society 
(1871) that pigs will always make a rush for snakes 
whenever they see them, and that snakes would 
always make every effort to get away from the 
locality of a pie. 
T know myself of an instance where Tamworth pigs 
were imported into a district in South Afriea with the 
idea of ridding a certain spot of the numerous snakes 
which infested it, and T understand that not only was 
