OPHIDIAN ACROBATS, 197 



Even in intermediate ages, when travellers and naturalists 

 began to confront fiction with fact, even in the days of Buffon 

 and Lacepede, a serpent was regarded as a living allegory 

 rather than a zoological reality by many intelligent, albeit 

 unscientific persons. Of such was Chateaubriand, whose 

 contemplation of the serpent partook of religious awe. 

 * Everything is mysterious, secret, astonishing in this in- 

 comprehensible reptile. His movements differ from those 

 of all other animals. It is impossible to say where his 

 locomotive principle lies, for he has neither fins, nor feet, 

 nor wings ; and yet he flits like a shadow, he vanishes 

 as if by magic, he reappears, and is gone again like a 

 light azure vapour on the gleams of a sabre in the dark. 

 Now he curls himself into a circle, and projects a tongue 

 of fire ; now standing erect upon the extremity of his tail 

 he moves as if by enchantment. He rolls himself into a 

 ball, rises and falls like a spiral line, gives to his rings 

 the undulations of a wave, twines round the branches of 

 trees, glides under the grass of the meadow, or skims along 

 the surface of the water,' and so forth.^ 



Excepting the 'tongue of fire,' the whole of this poetic 

 description is so far true and unexaggerated, that Chateau- 

 briand has not attributed to the reptile one action of 

 which it is not capable, and which, to the untutored mind, 

 might well seem supernatural. Roget, Schlegel, Huxley, 

 and others tell us the same things in the language of 

 science. To quote them all is impossible ; the reader 

 will be content with one scientific assurance of ophidian 

 capabilities, not less poetic than Chateaubriand's. 



^ Genius of Christianity. 



