Snakes

Several years ago, in returning from an excursion from Clevedon, in Somerset, to Cadbury Camp, I saw a viper on the down, which I pointed out to the old woman in charge of the donkeys, who assailed it with a stout stick, and nearly killed it. I expressed surprise at her leaving it with some remains of life; but she said that, whatever she did to it, it would "live till sun-down, and as soon as the sun was set it would die." The same superstition prevails in Cornwall, and also in Devon.