194 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



summer -hot Nature that invites our caresses, 

 always with a subtle serpent somewhere concealed 

 in the folds of her garments, we must go to litera- 

 ture rather than to science. The poet has the 

 secret, not the naturalist. A book or an article 

 about snakes moves us not at all not in the way 

 we should like to be moved because, to begin 

 with, there is too much of the snake in it. Nature 

 does not teem with snakes ; furthermore, we are 

 not familiar with these creatures, and do not 

 handle and examine them as a game-dealer handles 

 dead rabbits. A rare and solitary being, the sharp 

 effect it produces on the mind is in a measure due 

 to its rarity to its appearance being unexpected 

 to surprise and the shortness of the time during 

 which it is visible. It is not seen distinctly as in 

 a museum or laboratory, dead on a table, but in 

 an atmosphere and surroundings that take some- 

 thing from and add something to it ; seen at first 

 as a chance disposition of dead leaves or twigs or 

 pebbles on the ground a handful of Nature's 

 mottled riff-raff blown or thrown fortuitously 

 together so as to form a peculiar pattern ; all at 

 once, as by a flash, it is seen to be no dead leaves or 

 twigs or grass, but a living active coil, a serpent 

 lifting its flat arrowy head, vibrating a glistening 

 forked tongue, hissing with dangerous fury ; and 

 in another moment it has vanished into the thicket, 

 and is nothing but a memory merely a thread of 

 brilliant colour woven into the ever- changing vari- 

 coloured embroidery of Nature's mantle, seen 



