THE ICHNEUMON. 3l3 



While artfully his slender tall is playM, 

 The Serpent darts upon the dancing shade : 

 Then, turning on the foe, with swift surprise. 

 Full on the throat the nimble seizer flies ; 

 The gasping Snake expires beneath the wound. 

 His gushing jaws with poisonous floods abound 

 And shed the fruitless mischief on the f^round. 



** I had Csays M, D'Obsonville;, in his Essays on the 

 ^Nature of various foreign Animals) an Ichneumon 

 very young, which I brought up. — I fed it at first 

 with milk ; and afterwards with baked meat^ mixed 

 with rice. It soon became even tamer than a Cat ; 

 for it came when called, and followed me, though 

 at liberty, into the country. 



'' One day I brought to him a small Water Ser- 

 pent alive, being desirous to know how far his in- 

 stinct would carry him against a being with which 

 he was hitherto totally unacquainted. His first emo- 

 tion seemed to be astonishment mixed w^th anger, 

 for his hair became erect ; but in an insiant after, 

 he slipped behind the reptile, and with a remark- 

 able swiftness and agility leaped upon its head, seiz- 

 ed it, and crushed it between his teeth. This essay, 

 and new ahment, seemed to have awakened in him 

 his innate and destructive voracity ; which, till then, 

 had given way to the gentleness he had acquired 

 from his education. I had about my house several 

 curious kinds of fowls, among which he had been 

 brought up, and which, till then, he had suftercd to 

 go and come unuiolested and unregarded ; but, a 

 few days after, when he found himself alone, he 



