SERPENT- CHARM. 6 1 1 



t 



gered around in a circle once or twice, and then eat still. The chemi- 

 cals began to operate. First its legs and then its wings commenced 

 to tremble ; trying to stand upright, it put its feet farther and farther 

 apart and finally spread its wings, but to no purpose ; a convulsive 

 tremor seized it, and with a gasp it fell over on its side ; and only at 

 that moment did the snakes glide up to take possession of their prey. 

 The same experiment was tried with a ground-squirrel and two half- 

 grown chickens, and always with an analogous result. No animal 

 likely to offer serious resistance was captured outright by the rattle- 

 snakes. They managed to fetch it a bite and let it go, relying on the 

 virus to do the rest. 



Two causes conspire to make this the only practicable course for a 

 moderate-sized reptile not gifted with the wildcat-like agility of the 

 blacksnake. In the first place the fangs of a serpent are not rigid like 

 those of a fox or shark, but movable and rather slender, and utterly 

 unfit for seizing and holding struggling animals, excepting those of 

 the smallest size. The poison-teeth of a rattlesnake are even retrac- 

 tile, and, being only attached to the palate by an elastic ligament, can 

 be drawn backward by a temporal muscle, like the blade of a clasp- 

 knife into its handle, and are too feeble to penetrate the skin of a 

 tapir or hog, which animals attack and devour the most poisonous 

 snakes with perfect impunity. With such teeth they can only admin- 

 ister a snap-bite. 



On the other hand, the effect of the poison is never instantaneous : 

 a man can walk two or three miles before his bitten leg begins to 

 swell ; a snake-bitten dog can run for a couple of minutes without 

 exhibiting any signs of uneasiness. A large bird may possibly fly 

 away and out of sight, while even the smallest birds are able to take 

 wing for a moment, and rats to make a dash toward their holes. The 

 snakes know this, and bide their time with all the complacency of a 

 veteran angler who holds a fish by a long line and permits it to ex- 

 haust its strength before he pulls home. 



In the course of the countless ages during which men and serpents 

 have been coinhabitants of this planet, it is not only possible but cer- 

 tain that some hunters or wood-cutters happened to witness the last 

 act of an oft-repeated tragedy, the strange movements and subsequent 

 convulsions of a bird or little rodent hopping, perhaps, in a helpless 

 way around or even toward a snake that had watched it with glitter- 

 ing eyes. The first act they could only have seen indistinctly and 

 from a distance, since their approach would have saved the victim by 

 scaring it away in time. So they jumped at the conclusion that the 

 eyes of the reptile had bewitched the poor creature, and found be- 

 lievers who would be very sorry to demolish such a delightfully mys- 

 tic theory by prosaic investigations ; as for cognate reasons our spir- 

 itualistic contemporaries prefer to believe that the writing on the 

 slate was produced by the " dear friend in the spirit-land," rather than 



