194 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
summer -hot Nature that invites our caresses, 
always with a subtle serpent somewhere concealed 
in the folds of her garments, we must go to litera- 
ture rather than to science. The poet has the 
secret, not the naturalist. A book or an article 
about snakes moves us not at all—not in the way 
we should like to be moved—because, to begin 
with, there is too much of the snake in it. Nature 
does not teem with snakes; furthermore, we are 
not familiar with these creatures, and do not 
handle and examine them as a game-dealer handles 
dead rabbits. A rare and solitary being, the sharp 
effect it produces on the mind is in a measure due 
to its rarity—to its appearance being unexpected 
—to surprise and the shortness of the time during 
which it is visible. It is not seen distinctly as in 
a museum or laboratory, dead on a table, but in 
an atmosphere and surroundings that take some- 
thing from and add something to it; seen at first 
as a chance disposition of dead leaves or twigs or 
pebbles on the ground—a handful of Nature’s 
mottled riff-raff blown or thrown fortuitously 
together so as to form a peculiar pattern; all at 
once, as by a flash, it is seen to be no dead leaves or 
twigs or grass, but a living active coil, a serpent 
lifting its flat arrowy head, vibrating a glistening 
forked tongue, hissing with dangerous fury; and 
in another moment it has vanished into the thicket, 
and is nothing but a memory—merely a thread of 
brilliant colour woven into the ever-changing vari- 
coloured embroidery of Nature’s mantle, seen 
