After continuous showers in spring, lizards are often found in the
adjacent gardens, their dark backs as they crawl over the patches being
almost exactly the tint of the moist earth. If touched, the tail is
immediately coiled, the body stiffens, and the creature appears dead.
They are popularly supposed to come from the furze, which is also
believed to shelter adders.

There is, indeed, scarcely a cover in Surrey and Kent which is not said
to have its adders; the gardeners employed at villas close to the
metropolis occasionally raise an alarm, and profess to have seen a viper
in the shrubberies, or the ivy, or under an old piece of bast. Since so
few can distinguish at a glance between the common snake and the adder
it is as well not to press too closely upon any reptile that may chance
to be heard rustling in the grass, and to strike tussocks with the
walking-stick before sitting down to rest, for the adder is only
dangerous when unexpectedly encountered.

In the roadside ditch by the furze the figwort grows, easily known by
its coarse square stem; and the woody bines, if so they may be called,
or stalks of bitter-sweet, remain all the winter standing in the
hawthorn hedge. The first frosts, on the other hand, shrivel the bines
of white bryony, which part and hang separated, and in the spring a
fresh bine pushes up with greyish green leaves and tendrils feeling for
support. It is often observed that the tendrils of this bryony coil both
ways, with and against the sun.

But it must be remembered in looking for this that it is the same
tendril which should be examined, and not two different ones. It will
then be seen that the tendril, after forming a spiral one way, lengthens