IN THE SHETLANDS 361 
sausage, or interminable gouty black-pudding, set hard 
in a bolster-like attitude, with a crack, or repulsive 
sharp angle, at every one of the stiff, graceless bend- 
ings, supposed to represent those marvellous flexures 
of the real creature, which, when we see them in their 
living beauty, set the mind in a glow of admiration, 
and are a rest, as well as a feast, for the eye to dwell 
upon. This—this monstrosity—we are to have, and 
to be thankful for having it, instead of the gracious 
glidings and foldings, the sweet wave-like coilings and 
uncoilings, the subtle entanglements, labyrinthine 
complexities, that, going hand in hand with the greatest 
simplicity of design, and with the perfect, deft power 
of unravelment, make the living body of a snake both 
a joy to the esthetic, and a wonder to the intellectual 
mind : instead, too, of the radiance, lustre, sheen—the 
glory, both of pattern and hue—which sometimes sits 
upon its glistening scales, crowning them with a beauty 
hardly, if at all, inferior to that which decks the 
feathers of a bird, or waves on the wings of a butter- 
fly. All this we are to fling away for worse than 
“dusty nothing,” for a set of sorry deformities— 
worthy only of some wretched taxidermist’s shop- 
window—which every real naturalist ought to be 
ashamed to look upon, but every one of which must cost 
some poor serpent its life. The worst plaster cast, 
substituted for the original marble of a Greek statue, 
were artistic luxury compared to this; and those, 
indeed, who have no taste for art can enjoy the one, 
as much—or as little—as the other. It is easy to be 
