HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 19 



special organ yet may serve better than vision, 

 hearing, smell, and touch together, is of the greatest 

 importance to it, since to a creature that lies and 

 progresses prone on the ground and has a long 

 brittle backbone, the heavy mammalian foot is one 

 of the greatest dangers to its life. 



Not only must the seeker go softly, but he must 

 have a quick-seeing, ever-searching eye, and behind 

 the eye a mind intent on the object. The sharpest 

 sight is useless if he falls to thinking of something 

 else, since it is not possible for him to be in two 

 places at once. To empty the mind as in crystal- 

 gazing is a good plan, but if it cannot be emptied, 

 if thought will not rest still, it must be occupied 

 with adders and nothing else. The exercise and 

 discipline is interesting even if we find no adders; 

 it reveals in swift flickering glimpses a vanished 

 experience or state of the primitive mind the 

 mind which, like that of the inferior animals, is 

 a polished mirror, undimmed by speculation, in 

 which the extraneous world is vividly reflected. If 

 the adder quest goes on for days, it is still best to 

 preserve the mood, to think of adders all day, and 

 when asleep to dream of them. The dreams, I 

 have found, are of two sorts pleasant and un- 

 pleasant. In the former we are the happy first 

 finders of the loveliest and most singular serpents 

 ever looked upon; in the second we unwittingly 

 go up barefooted into a place from which we cannot 

 escape, a vast flat region extending to the horizon, 

 littered with adders. We have lifted a foot and 



