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.[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 saith) is white, neither the tarantula or Neapolitan spider, whose poison bringeth death, except music be at hand.  Wherefore I suppose our country to be the more happy (I mean in part) for that it is void of these two grievous annoyances wherewith other nations are plagued.