ble a ruddy blue; and as once in the year (to wit, in
April or about the beginning of May) they cast their old skins (whereby as
it is thought their age reneweth), so their stinging bringeth death
without present remedy be at hand, the wounded never ceasing to swell,
neither the venom to work till the skin of the one break, and the other
ascend upward to the heart, where it finisheth the natural effect, except
the juice of dragons (in Latin called _dracunculus minor_) be speedily
ministered and drunk in strong ale, or else some other medicine taken of
like force that may countervail and overcome the venom of the same. The
length of them is most commonly two feet, and somewhat more, but seldom
doth it extend into two feet six inches, except it be in some rare and
monstrous one, whereas our snakes are much longer, and seen sometimes to
surmount a yard, or three feet, although their poison be nothing so
grievous and deadly as the others. Our adders lie in winter under stones,
as Aristotle also saith of the viper (lib. 8, cap. 15), and in holes of
the earth, rotten stubs of trees, and amongst the dead leaves; but in the
heat of the summer they come abroad, and lie either round in heaps or at
length upon some hillock, or elsewhere in the grass. They are found only
in our woodland countries and highest grounds, where sometimes (though
seldom) a speckled stone called _echites_, in Dutch _ein atter stein_, is
gotten out of their dried carcases, which divers report to be good against
their poison.[190] As for our snakes, which in Latin are properly named
_angues_, they commonly are seen in moors, fens, loam walls, and low
bottoms.

As we have great store of toads where adders commonly are found, so do
frogs abound where snakes do keep their residence. We have also the
slow-worm, which is black and greyish of colour, and somewhat shorter than
an adder. I was at the killing once of one of them, and thereby perceived
that she was not so called of any want of nimble motion, but rather of the
contrary. Nevertheless we have a blind-worm, to be found under logs, in
woods and timber that hath lain long in a place, which some also do call
(and upon better ground) by the name of slow-worms, and they are known
easily by their more or less variety of striped colours, drawn long-ways
from their heads, their whole bodies little exceeding a foot in length,
and yet is their venom deadly. This also is not to be omitted; and now and
then in our fe