this time. We are used to snakes in India, and we don't mind them half as
much as you think you would if you lived here. The government offers
rewards for killing harmful animals, and thousands of snakes are destroyed
every year."

"Do you think it is right to kill them if God put them here for a good
purpose, Sir Modava?" asked Mrs. Belgrave.

"Certainly I do. God gave us fire: is it right, therefore, to let the city
burn up when the fire is kindled? God suffers sin and evil to remain in the
world, though he could banish them by a wave of his mighty arm! Shall we
not protect ourselves from the tempest he sends? Shall we permit the plague
or the cholera to decimate our land because God punishes us in that way for
violating the laws he has set up in our bodies?

"This subject is too large for me to pursue it in detail. I need not
describe the cobra, for you will see no end of them about the streets of
the cities in the hands of the snake-charmers. He is five feet or more in
length. His fangs are in his upper jaw. They are not tubed or hollow; but
he has a sort of groove on the outside of the tooth, down which the deadly
poison flows. In his natural state, his bite is sure death unless a
specific or antidote is soon applied. Thanks to modern science, the
sufferer from the bite of a cobra is generally cured if the right remedy is
applied soon enough. I have been twice bitten by cobras. The medicine used
in my case was the _Aristolochia Indica_.

"There is such a thing as a snake-stone, which is applied to the wound, and
is said to absorb the blood, and with it the poison; but medical men of
character regard it as not entitled to the credit claimed for it. A
chemical expert pronounced it to be nothing but a charred bone, which had
probably been filled with blood, and again subjected to the action of fire.
It is possible that the bone absorbs the blood; but that is not a settled
fact, and I leave it to Dr. Ferrolan."

"I believe it is a fraud," replied the doctor.

"The color of the cobra varies from pale yellow to dark olive. One kind has
something like a pair of spectacles on the back of his hood, or it looks
something like the eyes with which ladies fasten their dress. This hood or
bonnet is spread out by the action of the ribs of the creature, and he
opens it when he is angry.

"I had a tame mongoose, a sort of ichneumon. This animal, not much bigger
than a weasel, is a great cobra-killer, and he understands his b