148 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
My earliest date for the grass snake is 17th March (1918);
the following year I did not see one until the 18th April, but this
was a cold spring. The 1st April is the average date. On the
30th March, 1912, while in Hainault Forest with the Messrs.
Hocking, I made a grab at something moving in the dead leaves
at my feet. It was a bunch of snakes; two at least escaped down
mole runs in opposite directions, leaving me with a living knot
twisted together in an extraordinary way; but this consisted
of two snakes only. Christopher Parsons, in the April of 1845,
near Rochford, fired his gun at a similar commotion in the ivy
leaves on a roadside bank, and bagged nine snakes (cf." Zoolog-
ist," 1845, p. 1027).
Out of the many Essex snakes I have handled, not one
exceeded 38 inches in length, but in 1917, a Theydon snake,
34 inches long, was bulky enough to weigh exactly three-quarters
of a pound. I came across it on a dry grassy bank, far from water
and the colours were so dark, and the body so stout,that it looked
very much like a large viper. Young snakes are seldom met
with, unless they are unearthed from hibernacula. I have notes
of a set of three, each twelve inches long, dug out on the 21st
March; and, on the 7th December, of a brood of tiny creatures,
no larger than those which emerge from the egg. An attempt
to incubate snakes' eggs in my marrow bed proved a failure. Noth-
ing seems to be known of the length of time before a snake is
mature; it must be at least three years, and perhaps more.
3.—THE BLINDWORM OR SLOW-WORM (Anguis fragilis),
is not markedly common in the county. Sometimes I have
seen one in broad daylight, either on the move or basking in the
sun, but the animal has never come my way while turning
over logs, etc., in search of insects. Possibly it is common
enough in large quiet gardens free from children or jays.
4.—THE TOAD (Bufo vulgaris).
Of this Essex batrachian I have nothing very novel to record
As with the frog, we have still much to learn about its habits
and I have noticed that these points are handled with suspic-
ious brevity in the works I have read, both British and Conti-
nental. How old is the toad before it is mature? Where do.