Page:Natural History, Reptiles.djvu/148

140 has not been found in Ireland. With the common propensity to attach venomous qualities to all reptiles, the vulgar in our own country suppose the inoffensive little Slow-worm to be highly poisonous, and this false notion is shared by many whose powers and opportunities of observation should have taught them better. Shakspeare talks of it as "the eyeless venom'd worm," and speaks of "the blind-worm's sting" among the horrors which are to be boiled "i' the charmed pot" of the witches. Dr. Borlase, as cited by Pennant, speaks from hearsay of a man in Oxfordshire who had lost his life by the bite of a Slow-worm, which, however, the reptile could not have been, from the description which he himself gives.

No animal, in fact, can possibly be more harmless than the vilified Slow-worm. "Even when handled roughly," observes Professor Bell, "it rarely attempts to bite; and when it is irritated so as to induce it to seize upon the finger, the teeth are so small as scarcely to make an impression."

Like all the other reptiles that inhabit these islands, the Slow-worm retires to a place of security on the approach of winter, which it passes in a state of insensibility. Sometimes it contents itself with hiding under a compact mass of decaying leaves in a sheltered situation, but more commonly it penetrates into the soft earth, where it is covered with heath or brushwood, forming burrows by means of its smooth muzzle and polished body, to the depth of three or four feet, describing in its course "different circuits, and having several issues." It comes forth earlier in the spring than any other of our Snakes or