THE FOOD OF YOUNG ANIMALS 199 



especially if the snake to be fed is not very active and does not 

 seize the prey at once. The usual animals used for food, besides 

 fish, frogs and worms, are pigeons, ducks, rats, rabbits, guinea- 

 pigs and goats. I have watched, very carefully, what happens 

 when these are put into the cage of a snake and are not seized at 

 once. At first, just like any animals put in a strange place, they 

 look about them, and if they are not quite tame they may bolt 

 to the darkest corner. Presently, however, they become at home. 

 The ducks waddle about, the pigeons preen their feathers, rats, 

 rabbits and guinea-pigs scamper all over the cage or sit up and 

 wash themselves, and goats behave precisely as they do in any 

 enclosure. None of them pay the slightest attention to the snake 

 if it is merely lying quiet, and I have seen all of them walk over 

 the snake and lie down on it or beside it with complete unconcern. 

 When the snake moves, they get out of its way or push against it, 

 just as they would do with a stick, or another harmless animal of 

 the same kind. They have no special dread of snakes, nor the 

 slightest instinctive fear or foreknowledge of their approaching 

 doom. We tried a further set of experiments by taking a large 

 tame snake, which was very active, to the houses in which various 

 animals were kept, and at the Royal Institution I repeated some 

 of these experiments in public, by introducing various animals in 

 turn to a snake, if they could be taken out of their cages, or by 

 holding the snake against the cage in which they were contained 

 and letting it move over the cage or even try to get its head through 

 the bars. The snake that was used was not a poisonous one, but 

 I should not expect animals to notice a difference to which very 

 few human beings would pay any attention. A great many different 

 ground-birds and water-birds were tested ; fowls, pheasants, ducks; 

 geese, rails, coots and so forth either paid no attention to the 

 snake or tried to peck at it, in the fashion that they would 

 peck at any moving object. Parrots and cockatoos were equally 

 indifferent. A yellow-crested cockatoo which I had at the Royal 

 Institution amused us by being really frightened of a guinea-pig, 

 raising its crest and making a great fuss, but showing itself com- 

 pletely unconcerned when the snake writhed and twisted towards 

 it. Some of the more intelligent of the passerine birds, and in 

 especial an Indian hill mynah, showed their knowledge and dread 

 of the snake in the most definite way. The mynah's cage had been 

 covered up, so that the snake appeared to it quite suddenly, and it 

 began to shriek in an excited way and darted up to the remotest part 



