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SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



FASCINATION BY SNAKES. 

 By Harold S. Ferguson, F.L.S. 



XT O error is apparently more rooted in the 

 human mind than that which attributes to 

 snakes a peculiar power called " fascination," 

 which they are believed to be capable of volun- 

 tarily exercising. By this power they are said to 

 be able so to paralyze their victims that they are 

 rendered utterly incapable of movement, and wait 

 for the attack of a snake, or even go forward to meet 

 it, in fear and trembling, but without any power 

 of retaliation. Now anyone who watches the 

 behaviour of small animals placed alive as food in 

 the cages in which snakes are kept in captivity, in 

 the hope of seeing this marvellous power in opera- 

 tion, will be grievously disappointed ; chickens, 

 rats, guinea-pigs, rabbits, all move about with an 

 utter absence of fear of the snakes. It may be 

 said that all these are more or less domesticated 

 animals, and have no hereditary dread of their 

 natural enemy; but wild rats, placed in the cage 

 of their particular pursuer, the rat-snake of India 

 (Zamenis mucosas), exhibit an absence of fear. 



How, then, is it possible to account for the 

 existence of the belief in the possession by snakes 

 of the so-called power of fascination ? It may 

 have arisen from several causes. An observer may 

 come on the scene and find a number of birds 

 mobbing a snake just as they will mob an owl or 

 kite. The dashes of the birds towards the snake 

 and their fluttering round it may easily be put 

 down to the effect of the snake's glance, while 

 they are, in reality, merely the attempts of the 

 birds to drive off the intruder. A mother bird 

 whose young are attacked will almost certainly 

 behave in this way, and may herself fall a victim, 

 not to the power of fascination in the snake, but 

 to the force of her maternal feelings. Then again 

 it has been noticed that a hen placed in a snake's 

 cage will often go towards it and make a determined 

 peck at the snake's tongue. Dr. Stradling has also 

 seen a frog doing the same thing. Were this seen 

 to occur in a wild bird it might easily be put down 

 to fascination. With regard to snakes that kill 

 their prey by the injection of poison, it is even 

 more easy to account for the appearance of 

 the power, for they bite once and once only. 

 The poison does not kill at once ; the victim 

 nutters on to a branch, it may be, or runs a 

 short distance and stops, the snake watches 

 it, the poison does its deadly work, and the 

 bird falls. Anyone who comes up not having 

 seen the attack might in this way be readily 

 deceived into imagining that it was the glance of the 

 snake and not the poison that caused the victim to 

 fall. It may be then the approach of an insectivo- 



rous bird or mammal who, taking the movements of 

 the snake's tongue for those of a worm or insect 

 hopes to secure a meal. It may be the mobbing 

 of the snake by the companions of a victim that 

 has been seized, or of a mother whose nest has 

 been robbed ; it may be simply the effect of poison 

 already injected before the observer has come 

 upon the scene, or it may be simple curiosity. 



These explanations should suffice to satisfy all 

 those whose minds are not so filled with the love 

 of mystery as to make them prefer to believe in the 

 possession of this power, simply because it is 

 mysterious, and therefore to refuse a common-sense 

 explanation. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 

 one or other of the above causes has been at 

 work. What then of the hundredth case, and 

 what about the fascination exercised on man, 

 cases of which have undoubtedly been recorded ? 

 The explanation lies in the probability that it is 

 a case of hypnotism ; it may be said, however, 

 this is giving up the whole argument and admitting 

 that a snake can fascinate, only it is calling the 

 power by another name and saying that it can 

 hypnotise. But this is not so. The snake does not 

 hypnotise, the person is self-mesmerised ; the action 

 is purely subjective. Everyone knows the school- 

 boy trick of holding a cock with its beak pressed 

 against a table and drawing a chalk-line from the 

 tip of the beak along the table. The bird will 

 remain in the position it has been placed in though 

 perfectly free to move. Now the snake no more 

 exercises the power voluntarily than does the chalk - 

 line ; position and tactile impression here produce 

 hypnotism, and visual impression can produce it 

 likewise. It is an error to suppose will power has 

 anything to do with the effect. The matter has 

 been taken up scientifically by the medical 

 profession, especially in France, and it has been 

 found that the hypnotic state of sleep, or trance, or 

 whatever it may be termed, can be produced by 

 looking fixedly at the operator, or at a coin or at 

 the tip of one's own nose ; it is not necessary to go 

 into the question of how the result is brought about, 

 but there is a physiological explanation. What 

 happens then in the hundredth case is that the man 

 or the animal may be self-hypnotised by gazing 

 fixedly at the snake, the subject, being thus thrown 

 into a sort of trance, making no attempt to move out 

 of danger, unless roused by some exterior influence. 



We may conclude then that the attribution to 

 snakes of the power of fascination is due to faulty 

 observation, and the drawing of conclusions from 

 incorrect premises. 



Trevandrum, Madras; April 2gth, 1895. 



