earance broke the spell,
and the robin flew away; at the same time, the snake dropped its head
and assumed a perfectly inert appearance."[174]

A writer in the _Journal of the Indian Archipelago_ thus reports the
mesmeric faculty exercised upon a certainly somewhat unlikely
subject:--"On approaching an almost dry drain, I saw a snake slowly
extending his coils, raising his head, and steadfastly gazing on what I
saw to be an eel of about a foot in length. The eel was directly
opposite to the snake, and glance seemed to meet glance, when the snake,
having the requisite proximity, darted on the eel and caught it about an
inch behind the head, and carried it off; but the captor was soon
himself a captive, for with a blow on his head I secured both."[175]

The mystery is, as usual in such cases, attempted to be explained away.
Man does not like mystery; scientific man least of all: it is humbling
to the pride of science to be obliged to confess that there exists
anything unaccountable to the initiated. Mr W. C. L. Martin thus
"explains" the statements of Dr A. Smith, and all such accounts:--"There
is nothing mysterious in all this; the snake does not _mesmerise_ its
prey, but merely so terrifies it as to stupify it; besides, the victim
may feel an impulse similar to that which urges many nervous persons on
the edge of a precipice, or top of a lofty tower, to throw themselves
down headlong, and which we have heard such describe as resisted with
difficulty; so may the panic-struck bird feel an impulse to rush into
danger which it might escape by flight."[176]

And again:--"Fear, amounting to panic, solicitude for its young, and
efforts to drive away the dreaded intruder, leading the bird to venture
too closely to the snake for its own safety, produce the results
erroneously attributed to the Reptile's fancied power of fascination by
its glance, or by some mystic property."[177]

Dr Barton, of Philadelphia, who, at the close of the last century,
published a memoir on the fascinating powers attributed to certain
serpents, advocated the same views. He considered that in almost every
instance the supposed power was exerted on birds at the particular
season of nidification, and that the whole hypothesis originated in the
[Greek: storge] which prompts them to protect their eggs or young. No
doubt _some_ of the instances which have been reported as examples of
fascination are capable of such an explanation, but surely not all; and