MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 637 



of one hand being permanently bent at a right angle from the middle 

 joint. He was accompanied by a small orchestra, consisting of a drum 

 and a pipe on the first day augmented by a pair of brass cymbals and a 

 split bamboo clapper on the second day. When this rude band had tuned 

 up and reaUy got going, the performer divested himself of his coat and 

 removed his " gaung-baung " or silk head-dress which he wound round his 

 waist, tied his hair in a knot on the top of his head and then clad in a vest 

 and a pair of loose black Shan trousers, began his performance by remov- 

 ing the lid from a large round basket and hitting the basket on the side. 

 I expected to see a cobra, the usual adjunct of the snake-charming fra- 

 ternity, but to my surprise a very large hamadryad reared its head about 

 a foot above the basket and flattened its neck in menace. It was a 

 magnificent specimen in very good coat — I subsequently taped it while it 

 was held out at full length, but for the small curves into which its body 

 was thrown by its struggles, and it measured from nose tip to tail tip just 

 over twelve feet two inches — and no one knowing the swift death that fol- 

 lows a bite from this species could fail to be thrilled by the spectacle it 

 ofl'ered. Now the band toned down its raucousness and the old man 

 began droning a song accompanied by a dance of the iisual Burmese type, 

 that is, exaggerated posturing of body with a slight shuflie and much 

 waving of the hands. He approached the snake, put his face down close 

 to it and sang leeringly (or was it endearingly ?) at it. The snake never 

 moved. Then he knelt down beside the basket with his neck just below 

 the snake and enticed it to strike. The hamadryad lunged out over his 

 neck some two feet or more with half opened mouth and drew back again. 

 The snake-charmer then rose and continued his dance. Presently he 

 squatted in front of the snake and induced it to strike at him. After it 

 had done so several times he approached it slowly and extending his 

 tongue slowly licked its nose, a proceeding he followed by licking its face 

 all over and finally taking its nose into his mouth and closing his lips on 

 it. His next act was to turn it out of the basket which he did by slowly 

 pouring it out ivhile he stepped backwards with the basket so that it pre- 

 sently lay at full length on the groimd. He then placed his open hand 

 on its tail and when he pressed on it the snake instantly turned on him 

 with a rush and struck. After this he went through the same tricks he 

 had done with it while it was in its basket and they were all repeated not 

 once but several times. I then requested him to put the snake back in 

 its basket and he did so by deftly seizing it behind the head and lifting 

 as much as he could conveniently reach with the other hand while a small 

 boy lifted the tail. I next asked him if the snake had its fangs and he 

 assured me it had, so I asked him to show them to me. He caught it again 

 by the neck and pushing back the mucous covering said " there," but I 

 could see no signs of them, and on the second day when I tried again I was 

 fairly satisfied that they had been removed and that on one side the mouth 

 was still sore from the operation. He told me he had caught the snake some 

 26 days previously, and that he had often been bitten and showed me the 

 scars on his hands and wrists. These, of course, may or may not have been 

 due to bites, but I am inclined to think that very likely they were, for on 

 the second day, as he was releasing the snake after showing me its mouth, 

 he sustained a scratch on the finger from one of its teeth though this did 

 not appear to concern him much. I asked him what he did when he was 

 "bitten and he said that snake-bites had no efl'ect on him as he had taken 

 medicine for many years. He then produced some .small pieces of a 

 blackish substance which, he said, was composed of a certain herb and that 

 when a person was bitten all he had to do was to rub some of the sub- 

 stance on the palm of his hand and then swallow it. This herb, he said, 



