The lower parts vary as much as the upper: sometimes black or steel blue, with or without whitish or reddish dots or spots, sometimes yellowish or pale reddish, with brown dots or marblings; in some young, white with greyish dots. The throat is yellowish white or pale reddish, uniform or speckled with blackish, sometimes (males) nearly entirely black. The end of the tail is usually bright yellow or reddish, or at least with a few bright spots. And finally we must mention black specimens--some nearly black by darkening of the ground colour, others intensely black by enlargement of the markings. A specimen from Piedmont, in the Turin Museum, shows the ground colour reduced to mere narrow light bars disposed in pairs. In most of these black specimens the chin and throat remain entirely or partially yellowish or reddish, and a few spots of the same colour are to be seen under the end of the tail. A remarkable form of _V. aspis_, which some herpetologists would perhaps regard as entitled to rank as a species, is the var. _hugyi_, Schinz, from Calabria and Sicily. It is in some respects intermediate between _V. aspis_ and _V. latastii_. The snout is rather more pointed than usual in the typical form, often, though not constantly, more strongly turned up at the end, and the canthus rostralis may be distinctly raised. Constantly two canthal shields, the second in contact with the supraocular. Ventral shields 134 to 148; subcaudals 30 to 43. Pale greyish, yellowish, brownish, or reddish, above, with a broad wavy dark brown vertebral band, edged with darker; this band sometimes broken up into transversely oval spots; a lateral series of blackish-brown spots, each corresponding to the sinus of the dorsal band. Specimens so completely intermediate between _Vipera aspis_ and _V. berus_ as to render their naming arbitrary are known from parts of France and Italy where the two species coexist, and are probably to be regarded as hybrids. _Size._--The largest specimen examined (St. Sever, Landes, in the Lataste Collection) measures 2 feet 2-1/2 inches. It is a male. The largest female in the British Museum is 2 inches shorter.