2 10 
SNAKES. 
this snake prefers rocky, or at least stony districts abundantly covered with 
bushes; but in Schlangenbad, the only German locality where it is found in 
any numbers, old walls are its favourite resorts. As it feeds chiefly on voles 
and mice, it is a decided benefactor to the agriculturist and gardener. It also 
consumes, however, a certain number of lizards, as well as such birds as it can 
contrive to capture, and occasionally plunders a nest and sucks the eggs. It is 
jESCULapian snake (i nat. size.) 
very fond of climbing bushes, and low boughs or stumps of trees, as represented 
in our illustration; and in thick forests will go from bough to bough, and then 
from tree to tree without descending to the ground. Indeed, it is such an adept in 
climbing, that it frequently captures swift-running lizards on the stems of trees. 
Another South European species is the four-lined, or leopard-snake ( C . leopar- 
dinus). Remarkable for the beauty of its coloration, which, however, is subject to 
great individual variation, this snake attains a length of about a yard, and differs 
from all its congeners in the absence of a lower preocular shield on the head, and the 
