animals. It has been a singular time for adders, snakes, and lizards;
I never saw so many as I have seen this year in all my life. I have
been trying, a great part of this summer, to domesticate a common
snake, and make it familiar with me and my children; but all to
no purpose, notwithstanding I favoured it with my most particular
attention. It was a most beautiful creature, only 2 ft. 7 in. long. I
did not know how long it had been without food when I caught it; but
I presented it with frogs, toads, worms, beetles, spiders, mice, and
every other delicacy of the season. I also tried to charm it with
music, and my children stroked and caressed it; but all in vain:
it would be no more familiar with any of us than if we had been the
greatest strangers to it, or even its greatest enemies. I kept it in
an old barrel, out of doors, for the first three weeks: during that
time, I can aver, it ate nothing; but, after a very wet night, it
seemed to suffer from the cold. I then put it into a glass vessel, and
set it on the parlour chimney-piece, covering the vessel with a piece
of silk gauze. I caught two live mice, and put them in to it; but they
would sooner have died of hunger than the snake would have eaten them:
they sat shivering on its back, while it lay coiled up as round as a
ball of worstep. I gave the mice some boiled potatoes, which they eat:
but the snake would eat neither the mice nor the potatoes. My
children frequently took it out in their hands, to show it to their
schoolfellows; but my wife, and some others, could not bear the sight
of it. I one day took it in my hand, and opened its mouth with a
penknife, to show a gentleman how different it was from that of the
adder, which I had dead by me: its teeth being no more formidable
or terrific than the teeth of a trout or eel; while the mouth of the
adder had two fangs, like the claws of a cat, attached to the roof of
the mouth, no way connected with its jaw-teeth. While examining the
snake in this manner, it began to smell most horridly, and filled the