150 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



a case cannot, I think, be safely set down to fascina- 

 tion, nor to anything more out of the common than 

 curiosity, and, as in the case of the volatile, sprightly 

 fly and terrestrial spider, to the illusion produced 

 in the victim's mind that the suspicious-looking 

 object is stationary. 



Concerning the use, here suggested, of the 

 tongue in fascination, I can scarcely expect that 

 those whose knowledge of the snake is derived 

 from books, from specimens in museums, and from 

 seeing the animal alive in confinement, will regard 

 it as anything more than an improbable supposition, 

 unsupported by facts. But to those who have 

 attentively observed the creature in a state of 

 nature, and have been drawn to it by, and won- 

 dered at, its strangeness, the explanation, I venture 

 to think, will not seem improbable. To weigh, 

 count, measure, and dissect for purposes of 

 identification, classification, and what not, and to 

 search in bones and tissues for hidden affinities, it 

 is necessary to see closely; but this close seeing 

 would be out of place and a hindrance in other 

 lines of inquiry. To know the creature, undivested 

 of life or liberty or of anything belonging to it, it 

 must be seen with an atmosphere, in the midst of 

 the nature in which it harmoniously moves and has 

 its being, and the image it casts on the observer's 

 retina and mind must be identical with its image 

 in the eye and mind of the other wild creatures that 

 share the earth with it. It is not here maintained 

 that the tongue is everything, nor that it is the 



