168 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
existence of serpents of vast size and supernatural 
powers; in many cases the daemons or guardian 
spirits of rivers, lakes, and mountains. Given the 
profound veneration for the natural serpent, and 
the mental condition in which the mythical faculty 
is very strong, men would scarcely fail to see such 
monsters in certain aspects of Nature coinciding 
with certain mental moods; and that which any 
person saw, and gave an account of, as he would 
have done of a singular tree, rock, or cloud which 
he had seen, the others would believe in; and 
believing, they would expect to see it also; and 
with this expectation exciting them, when the 
right mood and aspect came they probably would 
see it. 
Even to our purged and purified vision Nature 
is full of suggestions of the serpent—that is, to 
those who are familiar with the serpent’s form and 
have been strongly impressed with its strangeness. 
Ruskin has called the serpent a “ living wave,” and 
compares it in motion to a “wave without wind.” 
In many of its aspects the sea is serpent-like; 
never more so than when the tide rises on a calm 
day, when wave succeeds to wave, lifting itself up 
serpentwise, gliding noiselessly and mysteriously 
shorewards, to break in foam on the low beach and 
withdraw with a prolonged hissing sound to the 
deep. Again, he has compared the serpent in 
motion to a “current without a fall.” Before I 
had read of Ruskin, or knew his name, the swift 
current of a shallow stream had reminded me on 
