154 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



instincts. . . . There are such things as natural myths 

 . . . the dark sayings of men may be difficult to read, and 

 not always worth reading ; but the dark sayings of nature 

 will probably become clearer for the looking into, and will 

 very certainly be worth reading. And, indeed, all guidance 

 to the right sense of the human and variable myths will 

 probably depend on our first getting at the sense of the 

 natural and invariable ones. ... Is there indeed no 

 tongue, except the mute forked flash from its lips, in that 

 running brook of horror on the ground ? Why that horror ? 

 We all feel it, yet how imaginative it is, how dispropor- 

 tioned to the real strength of the creature ! . . . But 

 that horror is of the myth, not of the creature ; ... it 

 is the strength of the base element that is so dreadful in 

 the serpent ; it is the omnipotence of the earth. ... It 

 is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the earth, 

 of the entire earthly nature. 



Of the animal's motions he says : 



That rivulet of smooth silver — how does it flow, think 

 you ? It literally rows on the earth, with every scale for 

 an oar ; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. 

 Watch it when it moves slowly ; a wave, but without 

 wind ! a current, but with no fall ! all the body moving 

 at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to 

 another, and some forward, and the rest of the coil back- 

 wards; but all with the same calm will and equal way 

 — no contraction, no extension ; one soundless, causeless 

 march of sequent rings, a spectral procession of spotted 

 dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. 

 Startle it : the winding stream will become a twisted 

 arrow ; the wave of poisoned life will lash through the 

 grass like a cast lance. 



He adds : "I cannot understand this forward 

 motion of the snake," which is not strange, seeing 

 that Solomon, the wise man, found in " the way of 

 a serpent upon a rock " one of the three wonderful 



