196 BEASTS AND MEN 
colour and is composed of crystalline bodies. It has been 
bought chiefly by Dr. Fraser of Edinburgh and Dr. Moeller 
of Australia, and I hope before long that the results of their 
experiments will be published. 
All this that I have related with regard to snakes gives 
some colour of truth to many of those Oriental snake stories 
which date back several thousand years. There seems no 
Indian jugglers. 
inherent improbability in the tale of Mithridates the king, 
who made himself gradually immune against all the poisons 
known in his day by taking slowly increasing quantities of 
them. For the same reason I am not inclined to disbelieve 
the stories about Indian jugglers who work with venomous 
snakes in which the fangs have not been removed. From 
their youngest childhood they have been made immune by 
the use of snake poison, so that when they have grown up 
