In the choice of illustrations my aim has been rather to exemplify a few leading features than to attract by brilliantly-figured examples. Some of the woodcuts are borrowed from Günther’s and Fayrer’s works; others I have drawn faithfully from natural specimens; but in them all I am indebted to the kind and patient work of Mr. A. T. Elwes in reproducing my own imperfect attempts. And as it was impossible to draw a snake _in action_ from life, or to witness a second time the precise coils or movements which had at first struck me as remarkable, the composition of some of these subjects was by no means an easy one. Our united efforts have been to represent the natural actions as far as possible, and this I hope may commend them to the reader. There are few English persons who have not relatives in India, Australia, America, and Africa, and from whom they are continually hearing of escapes or accidents from snakes. Many letters from these friends beyond the seas find place in the columns of the daily journals. Whether, therefore, naturalists or not, a very large class of the intelligent public claims an anxious interest in the Serpent race, and to all of whom my OPHIDIANA or snake gossip is hopefully addressed. CATHERINE C. HOPLEY. LONDON, _October 1882_. [Illustration] [Illustration] SNAKES: _CURIOSITIES AND WONDERS OF SERPENT LIFE._ CHAPTER I. _SEEING A SNAKE FEED._ IN any person who for the first time witnesses a snake with prey just captured, the predominant feeling must be one of surprise at the seemingly unmanageable size of the animal it has seized; and he probably exclaims to himself, or to his companion, as we did on the occasion described in the introduction, ‘What will he do with it?’ Let us again take our common ring snake, _Coluber natrix_, that ate a frog for our edification; only, in the present instance, instead of seeing a tame snake in a private residence at Chelsea, we will suppose ourselves to be watching one on the banks of a stream in fine summer weather. A slight movement in the grass causes us to turn our eyes towards the spot, and we are just in time to see the quick dash, and the next instant a recalcitrant frog held aloft in the jaws of a snake that with elevated head glides up the bank. Coluber’s head is no bigger than a filbert, and the frog is nearly full grown, its body inflated to twice its original size, and its legs, of impracticable length and angles, kicking remonstrantly. ‘How in the world is the snake going to manage it?’ again you exclaim, and your amazement is not exceptional. It is what has been witnessed and heard weekly in London when the public were admitted to the Reptilium on feeding days, and it is what the reader will recall in his own case when first informed that a snake was going to swallow that monstrous mouthful undivided.