244 
REV. M. C. H. BIRD ON THE VIPER. 
were all of a uniform size, the one I measured being 5§ inches in 
length and § inch in circumference. Each Viperling was contained 
in a thin transparent membrane. The diagonal back stripe was 
very distinct, and the poison fangs fully developed. 
On July 8th, 1897, I came across the only Red Viper it has ever 
been my lot to see ; it was hanging up outside Mr. A. Nichols’ shop 
at Stalham, and was killed “ up the river” by himself and a friend. 
Between July 25th and 28th, 1898, Mr. Nichols and his nephew 
killed two Vipers on the edge of Barton Broad, one measuring 
25 inches, the other 23 ; the latter was a “red” one. In Kent, 
Red Vipers are rare, but are looked upon as the most venomous 
(F. Roberts). Alfred Nudd, marshman of Hickling, who for the 
last twenty years or more has been in at the death of some dozen 
Vipers per annum at least, last year killed over a score, and 
seventeen in 1897. I have no account of the exact number of 
Vipers killed by Nudd in other seasons, but the above-mentioned 
average is none too large. He only remembers having seen one red 
one, and that was “several years ago.” I was at Hickling on 
May 5th, 1898, and Nudd told me that a few days previously he 
was walking along the wall round the Broad with Harvey the 
gamekeeper, when they saw a Viper take three eggs out of 
a Thrush’s nest, and Harvey shot the reptile as it was in the act of 
mouthing the fourth and last egg. I can remember when Vipers 
used to be hunted for, in the early seventies, at Winterton, for their 
oil. The last individual that hereabouts, so far as I am aware, has 
thus been made into “extract,” was on April 15th, 1899. That 
clever old fisherman, noted local Snipe-snarer and Dog-breaker, 
Sam Harmer, alias Captain Hanks of Hickling, then boiled down 
a gravid female, which had. previously to his opening her, contained 
eight embryos. Under date July 10th, 1899, I have a note of 
a Viperling, eight inches in length, being killed on the sand-hills 
at Hempstead ; and on August 22nd of the same year my diary 
makes mention of Mr. J. Waterson of East Ruston telling me 
that two or three years ago a neighbour’s cat brought home a live 
Viper, and played with it on the cottage brick floor for some time 
before the goodman (Wiley) killed it. The cat seized the Viper 
carefully and cleverly at the back of the neck each time it pounced 
upon it, and received no harm. 
My father-in-law, who used to live at East Rudham, lost several 
