and to the sustenance of your character as
inquisitive traveller, as you walk through the
garden-land "beside the murmuring Loire," or
the shady lanes of the Boccage, or the generous
vineyards of the Côte d'Or, blessed of Bacchus,
or the hill country of the Doubs, or through
half a dozen districts of France, whose bold or
gentle natural scenery and storied châteaux and
varied wealth of association make all your ways
their ways of pleasantness by day, you question
country folks in the field; if, as you sit in the
village auberge, whose excellent cuisine and
spotless table and bed linen enable you, despite
its dirty floors, to thankfully " shut up in
measureless content" at night, you question
members of the house or by-sitting guests, their
answers, often set off with curious dramatic
incidents and picturesque expletives in rich
patois, will fill your note-book with "snake
stories."

"Vipers," says Dr. Soubeiran, " are generally
the first reptiles to leave their retreats, as they
are the last to enter them when the cold
advances." With the falling of heavy frosts, they
look out for dry quarters under the moss, in the
fissures of rocks, in the hollow trunks of trees.
They consider fagot-heaps as most eligible
lodgings, also the close neighbourhood of
stables, of furnaces and of other fireplaces,
industrial or domestic, whither they are drawn
by the warmth. There they pass the winter in
a state of torpor, like old rentiers— not snugly
rounded head to tail like Savoy dormice or
American woodchucks, circled emblems of a
complete economy that makes both ends meet,
never in want of a meal, each one to himself
his own preserved meats— but lying in confused
intertangled mass, a hideous communism. It is
a happy natural provision for the ophidian,
which certain of the ill-fed, ill-dressed circles of
the human order might envy him, this faculty
of resting in a hungerless state of coma through
the period which otherwise would put a full
stop to his life. For he is exclusively carnivorous
in his diet, and his provisions de bouche
are chiefly made up of bats and rats, field-mice,
moles, frogs, lizards (small birds for a delicacy),
and insects, most of whom retire with him, or
sooner than he, from the walks of public life into
as close a privacy, or to another world. Insects,
especially coleopteres, form the almost exclusive
nourishment of the juvenile viper— his spoon
victuals, so to speak.

And so, with these fulfilled, he wriggles off
to bed for a five or six months' nap. Should
the winter be exceptionally mild, as in 1829-30,
he may creep out of a warmish day to sting an
artist making winter sketches in Fontainebleau
forest, or a folded sheep, or stable-yard boy, or
other conveniently-exposed party, just to keep
his fangs in; and the following summer will be
noted as an abundant viper season. If, on the
other hand, the frosts are unusually rigid, as
was the case in 1789, his still life is like to
change into a pure and simple nature morte.
Then huntsmen and their dogs, shepherds and
their flocks, barefooted little gardeuses de
dindons and the rest, go more safely a-field the
following summer. Then you will not be so
apt to hear the farmer's complaint that red
Nannette's teats have been stung, and her
wonted rich creamy milk all turned thenceforth
to thin boarding-school blueness.

Snakes make ready to quit their winter lodgings
by All Fools' Day; not moving far from them
till the hotter weather, when they wander
unrestrainedly. Their fashionable hours of promenade
are after the dew is dried. Country folk
know this, and so cut grass for their cattle in
early morning. During the mid-day fervour
they take siesta, coiled on the ground in the
sun or bedded on a warm rock; hanging
sometimes in the broom and on bushes, as it were
in a hammock. The wart-nosed ammodytes
occasionally affects trees— as if mindful by some
half-preserved family tradition of the old primal
serpent's mischievous performance in that kind.
Under the slant afternoon sun they go up and
down the earth again, seeking what they may
gobble, and then early to bed. Are they night
crawlers? The indelicate question has been
raised, but seems settled by weight of testimony
in the negative. At worst, it is only rare,
belated members of the family who are found out
after twilight. Night-hunting dogs and cattle
left abroad are next to never stung by them.
Individuals have been seen in water; but they
are generally averse to that insipid liquid, and
on the whole prefer dry and rocky grounds to
marshy places, though lamentably frequent in
some of the latter. The prevalence of the aspic
in certain localities, of the pelias in others, and
their common presence in still others, would
seem to have some relation to geological
conditions of the soil: but there has as yet been no
sufficiently large and thorough investigation of
this curious point to warrant positive
conclusions.

The venom of the Gallic viper is similar in
quality to that of other poisonous serpents, but
happily inferior in quality. In one respect,
however, he is more dangerous than the North
American rattlesnake, moccasin and copper-
head, inasmuch as he does not give noisy notice
of his presence like the crotale, nor exhale so
strong a warning odour as the other two. But
he is a friend of humanity compared with some
reptiles of his class in the East and West Indies
and in South America, such as the jarararca and
rattling boquira (crotalus horridus) of Brazil.
The imprint of the boquira's fangs on the human
skin is a death-warrant to be fulfilled within an
hour. A full-grown French viper does not have,
when his stock is complete, more than about
two and a quarter grains of poison on hand.
Of this he will hardly discharge at one stroke
more than a sixth part. The wound, then,
unless repeated and under "favourable
circumstances," will not be fatal. Among these
circumstances are, on the reptile's part, the season
of the year, the electric state of the atmosphere,
his degree of irritation; on the patient's part,
age, sex, previous state of physical health and
moral temperament. Of two hundred and three