HASTY OBSERVATION 267 



certain points, evidently to mislead its enemies. 

 It is the old trick of throwing a tub to a whale. 

 The creature sacrifices its tail to secure the 

 safety of its body. These fragments have no 

 power to unite themselves again, but a new tail 

 is grown in place of the part lost. When a real 

 observer encountered the glass or joint-snake, 

 these facts were settled. 



The superstition of the hair- snake is founded 

 upon a like incomplete observation. Every- 

 where may be found intelligent people who will 

 tell you they know that a horse-hair, if put 

 into the spring, will turn into a snake, and that 

 all hair-snakes have this origin. But a hair 

 never turns into a snake any more than wheat 

 is transformed into chess. The so-called hair- 

 snake is a parasitical worm which lives in the 

 bodies of various insects, and which at maturity 

 takes to the water to lay its eggs. 



What boy, while trout-fishing in July and 

 August, and using grasshoppers for bait, has not 

 been vexed to find the body of the insect, when 

 snapped at by the trout, yielding a long, white, 

 brittle thread, which clogged his hook, and 

 spoiled the attractiveness of the bait? This 

 thread is the hair-worm. 



How the germ first gets into the body of the 

 grasshopper I do not know. After the creature 

 leaves the insect, it becomes darker in color, and 

 narder and firmer in texture, and more closely 

 resembles a large hair. 



See what pains the trapper will take to outwit 

 the fox; see what art the angler will practice 



