the hedge bottom, or underground with marvellous rapidity. Like the late Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, the writer has more than once kept a tame snake of this species, and has even carried it about in his coat pocket, to the astonishment of urchins who have seen its head peeping out. In a state of nature they hybernate; but when kept in a room, a favourite resort in cold weather was among the ashes under a fire-grate. If a hot coal fell from the grate into the ashes, the snake would rush out hissing, but presently return to its warm retreat again. Held out by the tail, they will try to climb up their own body, and snap, as if to bite at one’s hand; but their only real mode of defence is to inflate the body with air to its utmost power of expansion, and then emit it again, charged with a strong odour, repulsive enough to drive most things from it. {71a} They are found in length from one foot and a half to three feet; and the writer has seen one killed, from which 32 unhatched eggs were taken, each egg about an inch long. The question of snakes swallowing their young, to shelter them from danger, though asserted by several authorities, I have never been able to prove or disprove, although I have often watched them. {71b} The Lizard (Zoctoca vivipara) is found in sandy parts of the moor, and sunny banks, but is not very common. Many a time, as a boy, I have caught it, and found, immediately afterwards, nothing left in my hand but the tail, the rest of the creature darting away over the ground, as if none the worse; or, rather, as one might imagine, moving more freely when relieved of the incumbrance. This “casting” of the tail would seem, really, to be an interesting, self-protective effort. As the partridge shams lameness in its movements, to draw away an intruder from its young; or, conversely, as the Russian traveller, pursued by wolves, flings away his children, that he may escape himself; so the captured lizard, as a last resource, casts off its tail, and leaves it, wriggling, to attract the captor’s attention, while its own bodily “better half” seeks safety in concealment. In the ponds at Woodhall the crested newt (Triton cristatus) and the smooth newt (Triton punctatus) were found by members of the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union, on their visit in August, 1893.