204 BANYAN HOSPITAL. 



the fracture and stopped the leak. When the pluvious ele- 

 ment was appeased, and all were making their way out of the 

 ark, the serpent insisted upon the fulfilment of the pledge 

 he had received ; but Noah, by Gabriel's advice, committed the 

 serpent to the flames, and, scattering its ashes in the air, 

 there arose out of them flies, fleas, lice, bugs, and all such sorts 

 of vermin as prey upon human blood ; and in this manner was 

 Noah's pledge redeemed."* 



If this legendary tale were " gospel," what a debt of grati- 

 tude, for nothing short of the boon of existence, should we, 

 though for ever paying, still owe, to the serpent progenitor of 

 our insect annoyers ! and to these, the offspring of his ashes, 

 well might we spare, without a murmur, the Shylockian tribute 

 exacted for the service of their parent. Then might we read, 

 no longer with contempt and wonder, how that, among other 

 singular objects of charity in the Banyan hospital of Surat, 

 those rightful claimants, the blood-suckers of mankind, have a 

 ward appropriated for their reception. Then, indeed, admiring 

 the grateful principle of that eastern foundation for defrauded 

 and persecuted insect creditors, we should only say of its sup- 

 porters, What pity that so refined a sense of justice, such a 

 precious quintessence of charity as theirs, should yet lack one 

 thing should be adulterated by the payment of their vermin 

 pensioners entirely through other and meaner sources than 



* There is also a Hindu tradition, in which the serpent, instead of saving, is re- 

 presented as trying to wreck the Ark. 



