EYE-BEAMS 133 



ours, and ejected tlie little snake from him 

 with unexpected ease and quickness, and tried 

 to escape. The little snake's head was bleed- 

 ing, but he did not seem otherwise to have 

 suffered from the adventure. 



Still a few days later, the man who was 

 mowing the lawn called to me to come and 

 witness a similar tragedy, but on a smaller 

 scale — a garter snake swallowing a little green 

 snake. Half the length of the green snake had 

 disappeared from sight, and it was quite dead. 

 The process had been a slow one, as the garter 

 snake was only two or three inches longer than 

 his victim. There seems to be a sort of poetic 

 justice in snake swallowing snake, shark eating 

 shark, and one can look on with more compos- 

 ure than when a bird or frog is the victim. It 

 is said that in the deep sea there is a fish that 

 will SAvallow another fish eight or ten times its' 

 own size. It seizes its victim by the tail and 

 slowly sucks it in, stretching and expanding 

 itself at the same time, and probably digesting 

 the big fish by inches, till after many days it 

 is completely engulfed. Would it be hard to 

 find something analogous to this in life, espe- 

 cially in American politics? 



