Snakes in Nature. 47 



ment of these creatures undoubtedly are, it is almost 

 excessive to speak of their "volumes of scaly gold" and 

 "thousand mingling colours," when referring to the actual 

 reptile in nature. That Keats should make his Lamia 

 transcendent in splendour, or Shelley his serpents of fancy 

 such miracles of loveliness, is well within their licence ; but 

 when the real creature is under description, poetical rapture 

 often goes beyond the subject. As in Montgomery : 



" Terribly beautiful, the serpent lay 

 Wreathed like a coronet of gold and jewels 

 Fit for a tyrant brow ; anon he flew, 

 Straight as an arrow shot from his own rings, 

 And struck his victim shrieking, ere it went 

 Down his strained throat, the open sepulchre." 



Their eyes are not like "live rubies " nor "living emeralds," 



" The light of such a joy as makes the stare 

 Of hungry snakes like living emeralds glow, 

 Shone in a hundred human eyes." Shelley. 



but, on the contrary, are most malignantly, venomously, dull, 

 and quite incapable of "flinging out arrows of death." 



That snakes leap at their victims is one of those popular 

 errors which it seems impossible to destroy. For, as a rule, 

 men and woman lose some of their presence of mind when 

 confronted suddenly and the snake is very sudden in its 

 gestures with one of these reptiles, and, if struck at, always 

 declare that the creature " sprang " at them. But it is a fact 

 that no snake can leave the ground; moreover, that the 

 radius of their stroke is limited in a fixed relation to their 

 length, a four-foot individual, for instance, being only able 

 to wound at say a foot-and-a-half, and so on in proportion to 

 the varying lengths. So that the snake 



" Who pours his length 

 And hurls at once his venom and his strength " 



is a poetical fiction, as, for the same reason, is Montgomery's 

 brilliant reptile quoted above. 



