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Then, there was the green-and-black snake described in the last chapter, an inhabitant of the house, which seldom exceeded three feet; and another of the same genus, the most common snake in the country. One seldom took a walk or ride on the plain without seeing it. It was in size and shape like our common grass-snake, and was formerly classed by naturalists in the same genus, Coronella.
It is known to be rather irritable, and to fix its small teeth so firmly into the human skin as to need a little force to pull it off, though the teeth are too short to do any real injury to the skin. Coronella is at a glance very much like a viper; and in the flames it would not be closely examined. While it is not reported as found in Malta except by Mr.
But there are three reptiles peculiar to this part of England which should be most interesting to a Hampshire zoologist. Another, the Coronella laevis, a harmless French and Austrian snake, which has been found about me, in North Hants and South Berks, now about fifteen or twenty times. I have had three specimens from my own parish.
They rode for days over a prairie studded with islands of fine trees, the grass smooth as a park, and beautiful with blue salvias and columbines, with yellow coronella and small starry pinks, and near the numerous creeks the white feathery tufts of the fragrant meadow-sweet.
The broad graveled paths are bordered by sweet-scented geraniums, the scarlet and pink growing wild; verbenas, coronella, and roses of many species, mingle artistically with the statues and fountains interspersed about the grounds. To all of this, just across a stretch of blue water, Africa forms a background.
For the larger portion of these Lucanian plains still remains uncultivated, so that thickets of fragrant wild myrtle and lentisk, of coronella and of white-blossomed laurustinus, stud the landscape; whilst the open ground is thickly covered with masses of hardy but gay flowering weeds.
Nature has long clothed the ruined area of the ancient city with her kindly drapery of foliage and flowers, so that the crumbling masses of tawny brick that we come across in our rambles are all swathed in garlands of clematis, myrtle, honey-suckle and coronella.
Leaving behind this region of houses and of cultivation, the zone of forest is reached, covered with woods of chestnut and oak, with a thick undergrowth of heather, myrtle, laurustinus and sweet-scented yellow coronella; there is grass under our feet, and long-stemmed daisies, violets, mauve anemones and small fragrant marigolds everywhere.
Hook, when he caught his specimen, thought he was killing a viper. My friend, Prof. J.W.H. Trail, of Aberdeen, whom I consulted, replied that Coronella lævis or austriaca, is known in Sicily and the adjoining islands; but he can find no evidence of its existence in Malta.
First I laughed, and then, seeing that she was about to throw herself for protection like a mountain of flesh upon me, I turned and ran after the snake for I had observed that it belonged to a harmless species, one of the innocuous Coronella genus and I was anxious to annoy the woman.
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