m offering to
bite when liberated, went off in the opposite direction with all speed. I
am sure that wild animals perceive quite as readily as tame ones do the
difference between what is purely accidental, and what results from malice
prepense. The snake must have perceived that its being trodden upon was a
pure accident, and, as it was not hurt, did not bite. A Brahmin once told
me of a somewhat similar case, where his mother, seeing what she supposed
was a kitten in a passage of the house, gave it a push on one side with
her foot. It turned out to be a cobra, which spread its hood and hissed,
but never offered to bite her. Colonel Barras, the author of some charming
natural history books, told me that he quite agrees that the cobra is
disinclined to bite, and pave me a practical illustration of this which
had fallen within his own observation. On one occasion, when some of my
coolies were crossing a log, which was lying on the ground, my overseer,
just as they were doing so, observed that under a bent-up portion of the
log there was a cobra. He waited till all the coolies had crossed over and
moved on, and then stirred up the cobra and killed it. I mention these
instances to show that it is probably owing to the fact of the cobra not
being at all an aggressive snake, and not being given to bite unless
attacked, or hurt, that no death has occurred on my estates, or in my
neighbourhood during such a long period of time.

But there is probably another reason, which has not, that I am aware of,
been taken into account by previous writers, and that is that snakes keep
a much better look out, and perceive the approach of people from a much
greater distance than is usually supposed. I was much struck with this
fact on two occasions this year. In one case I was walking along a foot
road in my compound, and on going round a bend of the road saw, about
thirty yards away, a snake in the road with its body half raised, and
evidently in an on-the-look-out attitude, and the moment it perceived me
it lowered its body and went off through the long grass. In the other case
I saw a snake on bare ground upwards of 100 yards away which had evidently
seen me, for it made off in the way which a disturbed snake always does. I
was this year surprised to hear tigers and snakes classed together as to
running away by a toddy-drawer--a class of people who are often out in the
jungle at dusk, and sometimes later. I had made a new four feet trace of