388 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. YOL. XLIII. No. ]]07 



It is frequently observed; but its first occur- 

 rence in any individual case is usually its last. 

 For if the child's motlier or nurse be at hand, 

 there ensues a scream of terror, a mad rush to 

 a safe distance, and a frantic admonition, 

 perhaps even a punishment, all of which is 

 quite enough to make a reptile thenceforth an 

 object of fear to the child. This is where the 

 mischief is done. The fear thus early instilled 

 prevents investigation; lack of investigation 

 protects ignorance; ignorance in turn corrob- 

 orates the initial fear, and thus the destruc- 

 tion of every serpent, large or small, becomes 

 almost a part of the average person's moral 

 code. 



In the second place, there are not a few 

 persons who have never in their lives experi- 

 enced the aforesaid horror of snakes. I am 

 not appealing to cases where fear has been 

 overcome by education, but to those in which 

 the confidence born of natural curiosity has 

 never been destroyed by positive fear instilled 

 in early life. I have known several persons of 

 this class, three of whom, by the way, were 

 women, and thoroughly normal women at that. 

 One of these last is worthy of mention in con- 

 nection with her brother. This gentleman, 

 with whom I am intimately acquainted, re- 

 members his first sight of a snake, when, at 

 the age of six, he and his nurse almost trod 

 upon a small water snake in a meadow. He 

 stin recalls how utterly puzzled he was at the 

 terror with which his nurse hurried him away 

 from the spot, and how entirely free he was 

 from sharing her sentiments. A little later, 

 in early boyhood, he developed an interest in 

 snakes which led him to hunt them in the 

 woods and bring them home in order to watch 

 their actions. His sister, who was even 

 younger than he, accompanied him and some- 

 times helped him in this pursuit. Their 

 father, a physician, knowing that no venomous 

 snakes could be found in the neighborhood, 

 not only did nothing to dissuade the children 

 from handling snakes, but gave them little 

 points of information and other assistance in 

 this amusement, which they had begun with- 

 out any suggestion from him. The boy, now a 

 grown man, and a collector of some experi- 



ence, has acquired an intelligent caution in 

 capturing large snakes, owing to several ex- 

 periences with their teeth; but he has never 

 in his life felt the slightest approach to an im- 

 pulse to shrink from even the largest serpent 

 as an object of horror and aversion. 



I am persuaded that any one who cares to 

 inquire into this subject will find other cases 

 of a similar nature, and in sufficient number 

 to acquit his fellow-mortals of anything like 

 a brute instinct to shrink from the serpent 

 kind. W. H. McClellan, S.J. 



Woodstock, Maryland 



Under the above caption, in Science for 

 January 7, at pages 25 and 26, an argument 

 for India as the cradle of the white race is 

 based upon what the author calls the " instinc- 

 tive horror of serpents." The evidence con- 

 cerning such an instinct is altogether too un- 

 satisfactory for one to assmne that the horror 

 is instinctive and it is by no means confined to 

 the white race or universal within the white 

 race. In addition, who knows that poisonous 

 serpents were as abundant in India in the 

 infancy of the white race as they are now ? To 

 what extent is their present abrmdance the re- 

 sult of the Buddhist inhibition against their 

 destruction ? Surely this inhibition must have 

 had a very considerable influence, and just as 

 surely it does not date back to the birth of the 

 white race. Until it can be shown that the 

 horror of serpents is instinctive and that poi- 

 sonous reptiles were as abundant in India ages 

 ago as they are now, the argument for the 

 Indian origin of the race, based upon such a 

 supposed instinct, can receive scant consid- 

 eration. 



Indians in northern New Mexico have been 

 known to flee from archeological excavations 

 because of the presence of a small, harmless 

 lizard, which they consider deadly, and to re- 

 fuse to retiu-n until the lizard had been caught 

 and bottled. There is not the least evidence 

 that this indicates an instinct arising from 

 ancestral residence in a region inhabited by 

 poisonous lizards. Poisonous lizards are at 

 present too restricted in range and not abun- 

 dant enough anywhere to constitute a menace^ 



