68 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Whether it is the male or female that indulges in this sport, I cannot say, or if it 

 may not be confined exclusively to either sex. I had the good fortune to see the per- 

 formance enacted three different times, in two of which the exhibition waB brought to a 

 fatal termination, but no attention was paid to the Bex of the performers. I should be 

 inclined to surmise that it is the male and he only. 



When reading some remarks upon the parasitic worms of the genus Gordius, more 

 commonly called " Hair Snakes," from the belief entertained by many that they are 

 horse hairs transformed in water into snakes ; the writer animadverted upon the ignor- 

 ance and superstition that still prevailed on this subject, which was considered not at 

 all creditable to the superior education of the present day ; which brought back to my 

 recollection something of the tedious process by which my mind was relieved of its 

 ignorance in this matter, and set mea-thinking that if the writer had been possessed of 

 some further information it might have tended to moderate his estimate of himself and 

 others ; for there are few erroneous notions in natural history entertained by the 

 multitude, that have such a reasonable excuse for their existence, in nature and in 

 fact, as this one about " Hair Snakes." And seeing that a knowledge of facta is a 

 more certain way of abolishing both ignorance and superstition than the denouncing of 

 either ; and as it seems to me that there are extenuating circumstances connected 

 with this subject that are not as well known as they ought to be, I shall give an account 

 of what 1 at one time saw. 



When I was a small boy living in the country, which was at that time 

 " Backwoods," and having no playmates of my own kind, I naturally sought for 

 companionship with other kinds ; passing my time in the woods and fields in search of 

 something new, curious or attractive to me, and especially in observing the works and 

 ways of living creatures, in which I found my chief enjoyment. On one hot summer 

 day after heavy and continued rain I was amusing myself in a pasture field that had 

 never been cultivated : and in which were numerous little hillocks with hollows on one 

 side of them, indicating that there, in the long-by-past, trees had grown, been uprooted 

 and decayed. The hollows were filled with pure water from the recent and frequent 

 showerB. Their bottoms were smooth and bright green, whilst their clear and crystal- 

 line waters reflected every passing cloud that floated over them in the brilliant sunlight. 

 Whilst dreamingly watching the rapid passing of small white clouds reflected in one 

 of these pools, my attention was aroused by an agitation of the water at one side ; 

 and upon examination I found a tuft of yellowish white hairs, which had evidently 

 come from some cow's tail, partially in and partially out of the water. The hairs may 

 have been between eight and ten inches in length, and there may have been fifteen 

 or twenty of them together. There was about two-thirds of their length in the water, 

 and the rest on dry ground. The part of them that was on land was a compact 

 mass, as if they had been plucked out together and dropped there ; whilst that part 

 of them that was in the water had each individual hair as widely separated from its 

 fellow as it possibly could get, whilst each and all of them were animated by an 

 undulating eel-like movement which they kept up incessently, as if they were making an 

 effort to get off and could not. 



I had seen Gordius before that, and upon inquiry had been informed that they were 

 " Hair Snakes," from which I inferred that they were hairs turned into snakes ; and here 

 sure enough I thought I had found a bunch of them in the process of transforming ; but 

 how one portion of a hair could become a living snake, whilst the other part still 

 remained a dead hair, was to me a perplexing and mighty mystery, and remained so for 

 many years afterwards. In some of my promiscuous reading I at length came upon a 

 satisfactory solution of the enigma. It seems that there is an animalcule of some kind 

 that breeds in water, and is in the habit of attaching itself to objects floating in the 

 water, and if these creatures are sufficiently numerous, and the object sufficiently pliable, 

 they can by united action produce an undulating movement, and give to the object an 

 appearance of individual life ; and this is what I had seen. Not quite an ocular delusion, 

 but a mental deception of the most convincing kind. I had noticed when looking at the 

 hairs, that the portion in the water appeared stouter than the other, but I satisfied 



