202 
SNAKES. 
the neck, and being pulled off by the owner wriggling its body between brushwood 
or dense herbage. Some sixteen to twenty eggs are annually deposited by the 
female of the ringed snake, these being attached together by a viscid substance. 
Although they are sometimes hatched solely by the heat of the sun, at other times 
the process of development is hastened by their being placed in a heap of decaying 
vegetable matter or manure. When the cold of autumn makes itself felt, this 
species retires for the winter, passing its time in a state of torpor ensconced in 
some hole in a hedge-bank, under the roots of trees, or some such place, where it 
YIFEKINE AND TESSELATED SNAKES (f Uat. size). 
remains till awakened by the returning warmth of spring. Not unfrequently 
several snakes occupy the same hole for the winter, and occasionally a considerable 
number have been found coiled up together in a mass. 
Tesseiated and The preceding species, as already said, belongs to the typical 
Viperine Snakes, section of the genus, in which the teeth of the hinder upper jawbone 
do not exceed thirty in number, and are gradually enlarged towards the hinder 
end of the series, while the eyes and nostrils are lateral, and the internasal shields 
broadly truncated in front. As examples of the second section, in which, while the 
number and characters of the teeth are similar, the small eyes and nostrils are 
directed upwards and outwards, and the internasal shields usually much narrowed 
