102 THE RING OF NATURE 



escape. First, it climbs up its own tail and looks 

 so very like biting your hand that you are almost 

 certain to let it go. If you have presence of mind, 

 however, you can shake it straight as often as it 

 begins to come up, and then this snake that has 

 never been caught before, and comes of a line 

 none of the members of which have been so held 

 for a hundred million years, inevitably tries 

 another trick so efficacious that it might have been 

 thought out by a college of scientists. 



It hangs straight, then swings in a small circle 

 that widens and widens till the snake is revolving 

 round a cone, the base of which is a foot and a 

 half in diameter. With all that leverage it is 

 putting a screw motion on its tail, which slips out 

 of your hand fraction by fraction and inch by 

 inch till you can hold it no more. If you want 

 to see more of your snake you must catch it again. 



Now see the fury of a baffled snake. When I 

 go to pick it up this time it flings itself back 

 in a venomous coil, obviously ready for the strike, 

 and hisses and hisses in a crescendo of fury. Such 

 an attitude ought surely to scare any one. But as 

 I still come on, the coil is readjusted, the spring 

 tightened to its very tightest, and the hissing, if 

 possible, redoubled. Finding its enemy still un- 

 daunted the snake suddenly attempts to slip past 

 my hand and make off. I get in front again, and 

 the coiling and hissing are renewed ; I put a 

 finger on its nose, and it does not bite. It seems 

 to know that to put its threats into operation 



