Snakes in Nature. 35 



To give one more personal reminiscence. I was at one 

 time a professor at the Agra College, and, sitting in my 

 chair one hot-weather morning, was holding forth with some- 

 thing more than my usual earnestness to the small class 

 before me. The subject was some problem in metaphysics, 

 the students were undergraduates reading for honours, and 

 examinations were close at hand. It was necessary we 

 should all be very diligent. My annoyance was very consider- 

 able, therefore, when I saw that the half-dozen young fellows 

 some of them were Brahmans persisted in looking over my 

 shoulder instead of at me. At last I looked round to see what 

 it was that distracted their attention, and found, to my surprise, 

 that a passing cobra, attracted probably by the droning of 

 my voice, had come into the lecture-room, and was enjoying 

 itself in a corner. These creatures, as every one knows, are 

 peculiarly susceptible to anything like cadence in sound, and 

 it is very likely that the monotonous rise and fall of a single 

 voice had taken its fancy, just as modulation of notes, 

 without any air, upon any musical instrument will do. At 

 any rate there was the cobra, and as fine a speciman as I 

 ever met with, with its hood inflated to the full, its spec- 

 tacles brilliantly white, and the sunlight striking in through 

 the doorway across its burnished body. There is something 

 singularly imposing in the attitude of this snake when excited. 

 My visitor in the present case had raised itself as high as it 

 could, something less than a foot, and was swaying from side 

 to side in accurate rhythm, as if in a trance ; and in the uplift 

 of the head, the proud drawing-back of the neck, there was 

 a positive majesty of bearing hardly conceivable in a poor 

 worm some four feet long. Now, a Portuguese author, writing 

 of India, says : "The sudden appearance of a cobra-da-capello 

 in a room is considered to presage some future good or 

 evil. It is the Divinity himself in this form, or at least his 

 messenger, and the bringer of rewards or chastisement. 

 Although it is exceedingly venomous, it is neither killed nor 



