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.[5] As for our snakes, which in
Latin are properly named _angues_, they commonly are seen in moors,
fens, loam, walls, and low bottoms.

[3] Galenus, _De Theriaca ad Pisonem_; Pliny, lib. 10, cap.
62.--H.

[4] "The adder or viper alone among serpents brings forth not
eggs but living creatures."

[5] Sallust, cap. 40, Pliny, lib. 37, cap. 2.--H.

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 fenny countries other
kinds of serpents are found of greater quantity than either our adder
or our snake, but, as these are not ordinary and oft to be seen, so I
mean not to intreat of them among our common annoyances. Neither have
we the scorpion, a plague of God sent not long since into Italy, and
whose poison (as Apollodorus