In February there are sometimes a few days of warm weather (about the last week), and a solitary snake may perhaps chance to crawl forth; but they are not generally visible till later, and, if it be a cold spring, remain torpid till the wind changes. When the hedges have grown green, and the sun, rising higher in the sky, raises the temperature, even though clouds be passing over, the snakes appear regularly, but even then not till the sun has been up some hours. Later on they may occasionally be found coiled up in a circle two together on the bank. In the summer some of them appear of great thickness--almost as big round as the wrist. These are the females, and are about to deposit their eggs. They may usually be noticed close to cow-yards. The cattle in summer graze in the fields and the sheds are empty; but there are large manure-heaps overgrown with weeds, and in these the snakes' eggs are left. Rabbits are fond of visiting these cow-yards--many of which are at a distance from the farmstead--and sometimes bring forth a litter there. When the mowers have laid the tall grass in swathes snakes are often found on them or under them by the haymakers, whose prongs or forks throw the grass about to expose a large surface to the sun. The haymakers kill them without mercy, and numbers thus meet with their fate. They vary very much in size--from eighteen inches to three feet in length. I have seen specimens which could not have been less than four feet long, and as thick as a rake-handle. That would be an exceptional case, but not; altogether rare. The labourers will tell you of much larger snakes, but I never saw one. There is no subject, indeed, upon which they make such extraordinary statements, evidently believing what they say, as about snakes. A man told me once that he had been pursued by a snake, which rushed after him at such a speed that he could barely escape; the snake not only glided but actually leaped over the ground. Now this must have been pure imagination: he fancied he saw an adder, and fled, and in his terror thought himself pursued. They constantly state that they have seen adders; but I am confident that no viper exists in this district, nor for some miles round. That they do elsewhere of course is well known, but not here; neither is the slow-worm ever seen.