608 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thought to be hardly limited by the capacity of its stomach. Gratui- 

 tous malevolence, according to current stories, has often induced this 

 symbol of the tempter to bewitch dogs and cattle, merely for the sake 

 of testing the efficacy of its magic eyes first, and of its poison after- 

 ward ; nay, a colored deacon of Navasota, Texas, affirms that he him- 

 self was once charmed by a flat-bellied rattlesnake, and favored the 

 local weekly with a circumstantial account of his adventure. On his 

 way home from meeting he took a short cut across a field (a sweet- 

 potato field his neighbors suspect), and was just in the act of climbing 

 a fence when his eye was caught by a piercing glitter in the weeds, a 

 sudden, flash-like gleam that went through him like an electric shock, 

 and made him grab the top rail with a convulsive grip. He tried to 

 jump down, but could not ; his legs were paralyzed, and a feeling of 

 numbness began to creep up his body and toward his heart, Avhile his 

 eyes became so rigid that he could not even wink. He found that he 

 could howl, which he did, with all his might ; but, instead of being 

 scared, the reptile wagged his tail, and came a little nearer. He gave 

 himself up for lost, when he suddenly thought of a big prayer-book in 

 his pocket, and in the moment when the serpent braced itself for a 

 spring, he hurled at its head a copy of Baxter's " Saint's Rest" (Tract 

 Society edition, 8vo), which, either by its weight or by its orthodox 

 vigor, staggered the fiend for a second or two, during which the deacon 

 effected his escape. The bird and squirrel stories are occasionally va- 

 ried by a similar termination : the arrival of the witness broke the 

 spell, and the squirrel hopped off, rejoicing ; or the linnet perched 

 upon the shoulder of the deponent, and twittered eloquently to express 

 its gratitude for his timely intervention. 



Only the insanity of the middle ages could excuse such supersti- 

 tions ; but that the subject has its difficulties is demonstrated by the 

 variety of conjectures which have been offered for its elucidation. 

 The serpent-charm fable has engaged the attention of different ancient 

 and modern philosophers, but their treatment of the question is mostly 

 what logicians call anatreptic, i. e., refuting without concluding any- 

 thing in the affirmative, and the theories of professional zoologists are 

 somewhat inconsistent and unsatisfactory. Bichat speaks of a stupefy- 

 ing effluvium (exhalaison hypnotique) by which some reptiles benumb 

 their victims ; and Van der Hoeven suggests that the above-described 

 suicidal infatuation of birds and rodents may be nothing but the well- 

 known self-sacrificing courage of the nest-mothers in defense of their 

 helpless brood ; while some modern ophiologists (Keyserling, Cabanis, 

 and Dr. Hitchcock) have rejected the idea that such sluggish reptiles 

 as moccasins and rattlesnakes unless assisted by accident or the arti- 

 ficial arrangements of captivity could capture more agile animals than 

 frogs or moles. 



But the dissection of swollen rattlesnakes has revealed more feathers 

 than moleskins, and the prairie moccasins of Kansas and Arizona would 



