POISON-SNAKES. 217 



cabalistic art, lie would recover in seven days. 

 But the officers of the barracks, close to which 

 the deceased had lived, interfered in the matter. 

 They put a guard of one or two men on the 

 house, declaring that they would allow the body 

 to remain unburied for seven days, but would not 

 permit any trickery. Of course the poor serpent- 

 charmer never came to life again. His death, and 

 the manner of it, gave a severe blow, as has been 

 already hinted, to the art and practice of snake- 

 charming in Madras." 



Roberts also mentions the instance of a man 

 who came to a gentleman's house to exhibit tame 

 Snakes ; and on being told that a Cobra, or 

 Hooded Snake was in a cage in the house, was 

 asked if he could charm it ; on his replying in the 

 affirmative, the Serpent was released from the 

 cage, and, no doubt, in a state of high irritation. 

 The man began his incantations, and repeated his 

 charms, but the Snake darted at him, fastened 

 upon his arm, and before night he was a corpse. 



These and similar occurrences, however, so far 

 from proving the falsehood of the snake-charmers' 

 pretensions, seem to our judgment to be ad- 

 ditional evidences of their truth ; inasmuch as 

 they make it manifest that these men believe 

 their own powers, though they may sometimes 

 fail. There is, in the present day, a far greater 

 tendency to explain away, or to disbelieve, or 

 boldly to deny, whatever cannot be readily ac- 

 counted for, than to confess ignorance, or to 

 weigh the evidence by which any assertion is 

 supported ; and we have often wondered at the 

 disingenuous manner in which writers will pre- 

 tend to explain away some straightforward, but 



