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 museiun 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 



