Dogs of another generation were concerned in a repetition of this experience in its significant details more recently. Having crossed a creek ahead, frantic appeals were made, but before I could reach the spot the excitement got beyond bounds, and I saw one of them snap up something, shake it viciously, and toss it away with every manifestation of repugnance and caution. Again I presumed the squirming reptile to be an adder, for the dogs, with bristling backs and uplifted lips, walked round it gingerly, sniffing and starting as if it were most fearsome and detestable. The bulk of the reptile gradually subsided, confirming the opinion that the dog had actually killed an adder, a feat I had never known it perform. Investigation again proved that an innocent lizard parading as an offensive snake had lost its life. Does not this evidence suggest that the lizard assumes the similitude and the odour of the adder, its tactics of concealment, and its characteristic habit of puffing itself out in order to warn off its foes? The spontaneous, unsuborned, and independent evidence of two sets of dogs cannot be wholly disregarded. Testimony confirmatory of the contention that adders do diffuse a specific odour, too subtle for man's perception though readily detectable by the sensitive faculties of lower animals, and that such odour affrights and therefore protects them from the reptiles, is contained in Captain Parker Gillmore's work, "The Great Thirst Land." Having killed a small specimen of the horned adder--the "poor venomous fowl" with which Cleopatra ended her gaudy days--and having handled it to examine the poison glands and returned to his pony, he writes: "As soon as I advanced my hand to his head-stall to reverse the reins over his head, he shied back as if in great alarm, and it required some minutes before he would permit me to closely approach. The reason of this conduct in so staid and proper-minded an animal is obvious. In handling the adder some of the smell attached to its body must have adhered to my hands." When four dogs and one horse, all apparently honourable and well brought up, agree on such a point, to theorise to the contrary would be ungracious. NEPTUNE'S HANDICRAFT February 16, 1909.