This adder was a very large (probably gravid) female, very bright in the sunshine, the broad, zig-zag band an inky black on a straw-coloured ground. On my third successful visit to the spot I was agreeably surprised to find that my adder had not been widowed by some fatal accident, nor left by her wandering mate to spend the summer alone; for {81} now there were two on the one platform, slumbering peacefully side by side. The new-comer, the male, was a couple of inches shorter and a good deal slimmer than his mate, and differed in colour; the zigzag mark was intensely black, as in the other, but the ground colour was a beautiful copper red; he was, I think, the handsomest red adder I have seen. On my subsequent visits to the spot I found sometimes one and sometimes both; and I observed them a good deal at different distances. One way was to look at them from a distance of fifteen to twenty yards through a binocular magnifying nine diameters, which produced in me the fascinating illusion of being in the presence of venomous serpents of a nobler size than we have in this country. The glasses were for pleasure only. When I watched them for profit with my unaided eyes, I found it most convenient to stand at a distance of three or four yards; but often I moved cautiously up to the raised platform they reposed on, until, by bending a little forward, I could look directly down upon them. When we first catch sight of an adder lying at rest in the sun, it strikes us as being fast asleep, so motionless is it; but that it ever does really sleep with the sun shining into its round, lidless, brilliant eyes is hardly to be believed. The immobility which we note at first does not continue long; watch the adder lying peacefully in the sun, and you will see that at intervals of a very few minutes, and sometimes as often as once a minute, he quietly changes his position. Now he draws his concentric coils a little closer, {82} now spreads them more abroad; by-and-by the whole body is extended to a sinuous band, then disposed in the form of a letter S, or a simple horseshoe figure, and sometimes the head rests on the body and sometimes on the ground. The gentle, languid movements of the creature changing his position at intervals are like those of a person reclining in a hot bath, who occasionally moves his body and limbs to renew and get the full benefit of the luxurious sensation.