126 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



part of the adventure here printed in italics ; nor 

 does it seem to have occurred to him that he had 

 under his eyes a proof of this deadly mesmerism. 

 Catesby thus tells the tale as 't was told to 

 him : 



The charming, as it is commonly called, or at- 

 tractive power, which this snake (the rattlesnake) 

 is said to have of drawing to it animals, and de- 

 vouring them, is generally believed in America ; 

 as for my own part, I never saw the action ; but a 

 great many from whom I have had it related, all 

 agree in the manner of the process ; which is, that 

 the animals, particularly birds and squirrels, (which 

 principally are their prey,) no sooner spy the snake 

 than they skip from spray to spray, hovering and 

 approaching gradually nearer their enemy, regard- 

 less of any other danger ; but with distracted ges- 

 tures and outcries, descend, though from the top 

 of the loftiest trees, to the mouth of the snake, who 

 openeth his jaws, takes them in, and in an instant 

 swallows them. 



Animals of greater size, though they are not 

 fascinated, are affected at the presence of these 

 tteptiles by the most violent feelings of abhor- 

 :xence. 



The largest I ever saw, says Catesby, was one 



:ibout eight feet in length, weighing between eight 



and nine pounds. This monster was gliding into 



-the house of Colonel Blake, of Carolina, and had 



certainly taken his abode there undiscovered, had 

 not the domestic animals alarmed the family with 



: their repeated outcries : the hogs, dogs, and poul- 

 try united in their hatred to him, showing the 

 greatest consternation by erecting their bristles and 

 ; feathers ; and, expressing their wrath and indig- 

 nation, surrounded him, but carefully kept their 



distance; while he, regardless of their threats, 

 glided slowly along. 



It is not an uncommon thing to have them come 

 into houses; a very extraordinary instance of 



which happened to myself, in the same gentleman's 

 i house, in the month of February, 1723 : the ser- 

 ' vant, in making the bed in a ground-room (but a 



few minutes after I left it,) on turning down the 



clothes, discovered a rattlesnake lying coiled be- 

 neath the sheets in the middle of the bed.* 



Catesby ' evidence relative to the power of fas- 



ccination is merely hearsay, it may be said; we 



will therefore call Lawson, an eye-witness : 



They (rattlesnakes) have the power, or art (I 

 'know not which to call it) to charm squirrels, 

 1 hares, partridges, or any such thing, in such a man- 

 i ner, that they run directly into their mouths. This 

 I have sr-en by a squirrel and one of those rattle- 

 ;Snakes ; and other snakes have, in some measure, 

 ; the same power.f 



I remember, many years ago, witnessing the 

 effect produced by the sight of a serpent on the 

 larger animals. I was enjoying my book it was 

 3The Lay of the Last Minstrel on a delicious 

 cwarjn spring day, under one of the trees in the 

 upper part of our pretty hanging orchard, then 

 one sheet of blossom, when my attention was at- 



* Carolina. 



t History of Carolina, 1714. 



tracted by the loud outcries of several turkeys far 

 away towards the lower part, where the fruit- 

 trees ended. On looking up, I saw them sur- 

 rounding a tuft of grass more than usually lux- 

 uriant. They craned over at this tuft, which 

 they surrounded, keeping at a respectful distance, 

 however, with ruffled plumage and half-expanded 

 tails, uttering the short, often repeated cry, pit, 

 pit, pit, as turkeys do, when they are annoyed and 

 frightened. As I advanced, their gestures and cries 

 were redoubled ; and, upon coming up, I saw a very 

 large common ringed snake coiled up in the tuft. 

 At my approach, it started off, followed by myself 

 and the turkeys, they still crying and gesticulat- 

 ing, but saved itself in the hedge. I could not 

 help asking myself whether the Transatlantic 

 blood in their veins had not roused their latent 

 instincts, and impressed their brains with the no- 

 tion that they had come upon one of the smaller 

 rattlesnakes. 



By the way, there is no longer a shadow of 

 doubt that the serpents operated upon by the ser- 

 pent-charmers at the Zoological Garden last year, 

 had been deprived of their poison-fangs by mechan- 

 ical means. 



Acrell, at the close of his statement relative to 

 the alleged fascination of serpents, asks " Do we 

 not see, in the summer, a parallel instance at 

 home, in the toad, a most indolent animal, into 

 whose mouth, as it lies in the shade or under a 

 shrub, butterflies and other insects fly?" 



Certainly the insects do fly into the toad's 

 mouth, but not, it may be suspected, without a 

 little help ; and this reminds me of the promise 

 to give my readers some notion of the mechanism 

 by which the tongue of that reptile acts with such 

 marvellous rapidity and certainty in securing its 

 prey. 



Mr. Arscott, of Tehott, Devonshire 't is an 

 old tale, but none the worse for that kept a pet 

 toad, which, when he first knew it, was called by 

 his father, " the* old toad;" and Mr. Arscott, 

 fils, answers for a knowledge of it for thirty-six 

 years. How long would it have lived ? 



Ay, that is the question, which a mischievous 

 devil of a tame raven those ravens are certainly 

 supremely diabolical took care should not be 

 answered ; for he dabbed one of the poor toad's 

 eyes out with his horny beak, after kenning' it, as 

 if to satisfy himself, like one of Homer's heroes, 

 where he could plant his dab so as to do it most 

 mischief, as it came out one fine evening from the 

 hole which its kind master had caused to be made 

 for it under the third step, when he " new-laid 

 the steps;" and, at the same time, otherwise mal- 

 treated the poor sweltering pet. so that it was 

 never the same toad again. The story is extant, 

 and written in choice English, in the Appendix 

 to Pennant's British Zoology, to which the reader 

 is referred for the interesting details, which, 

 while they show that the kind and observing nar- 

 rator was ignorant of some things that modern 

 science has made manifest, indicate the honest 

 truth of his narrative. 



