EDIBLE QUALITIES OF THE FLESH. 105 



a woman had caught when berrying in the mountains. Two children 

 were with her, and they suddenly disturbed four of the snakes. Remem- 

 bering my advertisement for living reptiles, the family applied them- 

 selves to capturing the whole four, but only succeeded in getting this 

 one unmanned by pinning it to the ground with a forked stick. Then 

 the problem arose, how to fasten and carry the creature. Having a long 

 piece of twine and a tin collender with her, the woman made a slip-noose 

 of the string and passed it np through one of the holes in the bottom of 

 the vessel. Then, by the aid of a switch, the noose was looped over the 

 triangular head of the captive, and the collender (inverted) let fall upon 

 him as the boy removed his prong. Mr. Snake at once coiled up in the 

 round tin dish and began singing in his highest key, but the check-string 

 through the bottom held his head down, and thus ignominiously he was 

 brought to my house. "I've packed the ornery critter a heap of a dis- 

 tance, 'n' I reckin I oughter have six bits," the woman said, and I cheer- 

 fully paid it. 



It has already been asserted that the poisonous quality of the snake 

 resides wholly in the fluid of the venom-gland. A wound from the other 

 teeth does no harm, and the Indians and some rural doctors of old days 

 used the sharp little points, set comb-like in a split reed, as convenient 

 and effective scarifiers when blood was to be let for medicinal or supersti- 

 tious ends. No fang could ever be used safely for that purpose. The 

 flesh, too, which is white and flaky, like that of frogs or the breast of 

 birds, has often served as food, its forming a part of the aboriginal fare 

 being noticed by the earliest writers. Josselyn tells us that the New 

 England Indians, " when weary with travelling," will take up rattlesnakes 

 with their bare hands, "laying hold with one hand behind their head, 

 with the other taking hold of their tail, and with their teeth tear off the 

 skin of their backs, and feed upon them alive ; which, they say, ref resheth 

 them." It is possible in this practice to see the doctrine of transmutation 

 of qualities (namely, that the human spirit will become imbued with the 

 characteristics of what the body is fed upon) which led to cannibalism, 

 and operates throughout all the savage theory of life ; but Charlevoix has 

 no mysterious benefit in view, beyond the satisfaction of hunger, when he 

 says the Canadian Indians " chace it, and find its Flesh very good. I have 

 even heard some Frenchmen, who had tasted it, say that it was not bad 

 eating; but they were travellers, and such People think everything good, 

 because they are often hungry. But this [is] at least certain, that it does 

 no harm to those that eat it." 



The worthy man need not have been so incredulous and sarcastic. 



