266 THE TEERIBLE. 



presence of mind enough to let it alone. One is told of 

 an officer who, having some repairs done to his bungalow, 

 was lying on a mattress in the verandah, reading, nearly 

 undressed. Perhaps his book was of a soporific tendency, 

 for he dropped asleep, and awaked with a chilly sensation 

 about his breast. Opening his eyes, he beheld, to his 

 horror, a large cobra coiled up on his bosom, within his 

 open shirt. He saw, in a moment, that to disturb the 

 creature would be highly perilous, almost certainly fatal, 

 and that it was at present doing no harm, and apparently 

 intending none. With great coolness therefore he lay per- 

 fectly still, gazing on the bronzed and glittering scales of 

 the intruder. After a period which seemed to him an 

 age, one of the workmen approached the verandah, and 

 the snake at his footsteps left its warm berth, and was 

 gliding off, when the servants at the cry of the artisan 

 rushed out and destroyed it. 



It curiously happens that in some of the creatures whose 

 rage is likely to be fatal to man, there should be some- 

 thing in the physiognomy which puts him on his guard. 

 We have seen that it is so in the sharks ; we have seen 

 that it is so in the crocodiles ; it is so pre-eminently in 

 the venomous serpents. There is in most of these an 

 expression of malignity, which well indicates their deadly 

 character. Their flattened head, more or less widened 

 behind, so as to approach a triangular figure ; their wide 

 gape, and the cleft tongue ever darting to and fro ; and, 

 above all, the sinister expression of the glaring lidless eye, 

 \vith its linear pupil ; are sufficient to cause the observer 



