ough which he
must be passing without her, and dreading to enter an academy or
picture-gallery lest a laocoon or a fury might revive apprehensions too
horrible to be borne. In view of possibilities so dreadful, surely it is
a duty that a man owes to his kind to disseminate the truth, if he can,
about the present condition in the East of that reptile which, crawling
on its belly and eating dust and having its head bruised by the
descendants of Eve, sometimes pays off her share of the curse on their
heels. Here the truth is.
Within the limits of our Indian Empire, including Burmah and Ceylon,
there are at present known to naturalists two hundred and sixty-four
species of snakes. Twenty-seven of these are sea-serpents, which never
leave the sea, and could not if they would. The remaining two hundred
and thirty-seven species comprise samples of every size and pattern of
limbless reptile found on this globe, from the gigantic python, which
crushes a jackal and swallows it whole, to the little burrowing
_Typhlops_, whose proportions are those of an earthworm and its food
white ants.
If you have made up your mind never to touch a snake or go nearer to one
than you can help, then I need scarcely tell you what you know already,
that these are all alike hideous and repulsive in their aspect, being
smeared from head to tail with a viscous and venomous slime, which, as
your Shakespeare will tell you, leaves a trail even on fig-leaves when
they have occasion to pass over such. This preparation would appear to
line them inside as well as out, for there is no lack of ancient and
modern testimony to the fact that they "slaver" their prey all over
before swallowing it, that it may slide the more easily down their
ghastly throats. Their eye is cruel and stony, and possesses a peculiar
property known as "fascination," which places their victims entirely at
their mercy. They have also the power of coiling themselves up like a
watch-spring and discharging themselves from a considerable distance at
those whom they have doomed to death--a fact which is attested by such
passages in the poets as--
Like adder darting from his coil,
and by travellers _passim_.
This is the true faith with respect to all serpents, and if you are
resolved to remain steadfast in it, you may do so even in India, for it
is possible to live in that country for months, I might almost say
years, without ever getting a sight of a live snake except in the baske
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