170 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



the sandy road. This impression is always the more 

 vivid when the snake happens to take the same direction 

 in which the poor frightened person may happen to flee. 

 Now, if people are taught to expect to encounter any 

 given form of dangerous animal, in any neighborhood, 

 they are apt, when any creature having the similitude of 

 this mythical foe to humanity is seen, to endow it with all 

 direful attributes, and their distorted vision will convert 

 into a horrible monstrosity, and detect impossible capers 

 in a harmless and inoffensive creature. 



Now, I have taken the trouble to question a certain 

 class of people concerning this hoop-snake, and I find it 

 is firmly believed in by hundreds, who affirm that they, 

 their parents, or some one of their friends had seen them, 

 been chased by them, or had indirectly captured them, 

 by suddenly darting behind a tree, when the snake would 

 uncoil, and, striking its tail into the tree, would be held 

 by it, and when in this position would be killed by the 

 person pursued. 



Now, all of these statements are just as explicit as the 

 finding of dormant swallows in the mud ; yet, one and all, 

 they are absolutely false. If, therefore, the impression 

 is made on the minds of the young people of any commu- 

 nity that swallows hibernate in the mud, it will be diffi- 

 cult to rid them of the idea that any swallow that may 

 be found in, or even near water, is not indicative of the 

 truth that swallows do really pass the winter in such a 

 manner. Is this more unreasonable than that the belief 

 in hoop-snakes should be so common, even among other- 

 wise well-informed people ? If we can not explain this 

 impression that swallows hibernate in mud, and beneath 

 water too, in some such manner as I have endeavored to 

 make plain, then our only alternative is to exclaim, in de- 

 spair, " Lord ! Lord ! How this world is given to lying." 



