386 LEAVES FROM THE 



The squirrel, so runs their account, utters a mournful 

 and feeble cry, and, as if foreseeing his fate, leaps from 

 bough to bough on every side, seemingly to attempt a 

 sudden escape ; but, struck with the fascination, he comes 

 down the tree, and flings himself with a spring into the 

 very jaws of his enemy. The observations of some 

 Englishmen, continues Acrell, seem to confirm the truth 

 of this. They shut up a mouse with one of these 

 fascinating rattlesnakes in an iron box; the mouse sat 

 in one corner — the rattlesnake was opposite to it. The 

 reptile fixed its eye, terrible as Vathek's, upon the little 

 trembler, which was, at last, forced to throw itself into 

 the mouth of the serpent. Acrell adds, that the same 

 experiment was repeated in Italy with a pregnant female 

 viper, and with the same success.* 



A piece of evidence, apparently unintentional, occurs 

 in Captain Forbes's book, already noticed. 



On passing from the viceroy's house at Ahomey (the 

 grass very high), he observed, within an inch of his leg, 

 a small lizard, with its eyes fixed. It did not move on 

 his apiwoach. At the same moment, a cobra darted at 

 it, and before he could raise his stick, bore it away — 

 'rather a narrow escape from death,' as the captain 

 quietly observes. The captain makes no comment on 

 that 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 'twas told to him : 



The charmiug, as it is commonly called, or attractive power, 

 which this snake (the rattlesnake) is said to have of drawing to it 

 animals, and devouring them, is generally believed in America ; as 

 for my o^ti 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 



* Am. Acad. 



