EYE-BEAMS 131 



boy called me to the garden to see a black snake in 

 the act of swallowing a garter snake. The little 

 snake was holding back with all his might and main, 

 hooking his tail about the blackberry bushes, and 

 pulling desperately ; still his black enemy was slowly 

 engulfing him, and had accomplished about eight or 

 ten inches of him, when he suddenly grew alarmed 

 at some motion of ours, and ejected the 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 swal- 

 lowing 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 composure than when 

 a bird or frog is the victim. It is said that in the 

 deep sea there is a fish that will swallow 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 di- 

 gesting 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, especially in 

 American politics? 



