188 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
a wonder and mystery to the wisest man. In 
one of my snake-books by a French naturalist in 
the West Indies there is an account of a fer-de-lance 
which he kept confined in order to study its habits. 
He watched it hour after hour, day after day, 
lying prone on the floor of its cage as if asleep or 
stupefied, until he was sick and tired of seeing it 
in that dull, dead-alive state, and in his disgust he 
threw open the door to let it go free. He watched 
it. Slowly the head turned, and slowly, slowly it 
began to move towards the open door, and so 
dragged itself out, then over the space of bare 
ground towards the bushes and trees beyond. But 
once well out in the open air its motions and 
aspect began to change. The long, straightened- 
out, dull-coloured, dragging body was smitten with 
a sudden new life and became sinuous in form; 
its slow motion grew swift, and from a dragging 
became a gliding motion; the dangerous head > 
with its flickering tongue lifted itself high up, the 
stony eyes shone, and all along the body the 
scales sparkled like wind-crinkled water in the 
sun: watching it, he was thrilled at the sight 
and amazed at this wonderful change in_ its 
appearance. 
And that is how I, too, would have liked to see 
the fer-de-lance in its dreadful beauty and power; 
the cribo too, that gives it battle, and conquers 
and devours it in spite of its poison fangs; also 
its noble relations, the rattlesnakes and pit-vipers, 
led by the Surucurd, the serpent monarch of the 
