8858 



Reptiles. 



after reconnoitring up stream and down to see that all was safe, the 

 owners had ventured out to their last evening meal on the juicy water- 

 lilies, which grew plentifully about, and had fallen victims to my fancy 

 for trying to skin everything which came in my way. I had waited 

 longer than usual for another shot, and was thinking of moving, when 

 suddenly an old rat dashed out of a hole exactly opposite me, and, 

 ere I could fire, had dived and was hidden among the weeds. Before 

 I had time to wonder at such unwonted behaviour, a snake glided 

 quickly from the hole, apparently in full pursuit, and, without a 

 moment's hesitation, took to the water behind him. 



Now, Sir, I have no desire to claim infallibility for any school-boy, 

 and most certainly not for myself, and I may no doubt have been 

 mistaken; but I now repeat, as my decided impression and firm 

 belief, what at the time, in spite of not a few jokes at my expense, 

 I positively asserted as an undeniable fact, viz. that on the back of the 

 snake's head there was a diamond- shaped patch of bright red. 

 I know that it will most probably be objected that a boy of fifteen or 

 sixteen cannot be expected to observe such things with the critical 

 exactness of a full-grown naturalist, and that the same weight can 

 scarcely attach to his evidence as to that of an older person ; that the 

 natural love of the marvellous, shaping itself into a wish to be thought 

 to have seen something out of the common, is very apt to lead a boy, 

 almost unintentionally perhaps, into exaggerations which may easily 

 be repeated until he believes them to be actually true ; but I do not 

 think this was the case with me. I fired at the snake as it wriggled 

 along the top of the water towards me (it had evidently lost the scent), 

 and, when my shot failed to stop it, in my excitement, I jumped into 

 the stream, and tried to belabour it with the butt end of the gun. 

 However, it was too much for me, and I lost it in the mud I had 

 myself stirred up. 



Some little time afterwards three of us were netting roach and dace, 

 in the next field above, where the brook is narrow and the water 

 very clear. The plan of fishing which we had found by experience 

 answered best, was for one to walk on each side with the flue carried 

 between the two and reaching across, ready to drop it at a moment's 

 notice as the shoals darted by. One of my brothers, at the time a 

 Rugby boy, had gone on ahead of the net with a pole to drive the fish 

 down, and had just climbed over a hedge to get to the other side of a 

 good pool. He had been out of sight scarcely a minute, when he 

 came running back to say that he had found a " red-headed snake," 

 and that when it saw him it jumped into the brook and got away. 



