A YOUNG NATURALIST. 



121 



Lucien, who had been prowling about, lifting up stones and 

 looking under stubs in order to find insects, loudly called 

 out to me. When I got up to him, I saw at the bottom of 

 a hole a coral-serpent, measuring about a yard in length. 

 The reptile was coiled up, and remained motionless while 

 we admired its beautiful red skin, divided at intervals with 

 rings of shining black. L'Encuerado promptly cut a fork- 

 ed stick and pinned the animal down to the ground. The 

 prisoner immediately tried to stand up on end; its jaws 

 distended, and its head assumed a menacing aspect. Grin- 

 galet barked at it furiously, without, however, daring to go 

 near. The Indian unsheathed his cutlass — the prospect of 

 an unlooked-for addition to dinner quite delighted him. 



The flesh of the serpent is a well-known Indian dish. 

 Previous to the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, the 

 rattlesnake itself found its place at their highest festivals. 

 Dioscorides* prescribed the flesh of the viper as a tonic, 

 and it formed one of the component parts of Iheriaca, the 

 great panacea of our ancestors, which was one of the prin- 

 cipal branches of Venetian commerce. In spite of all these 

 precedents, the dish proposed by l'Encuerado was unani- 

 mously rejected. 



Having cut off the serpent's head, we all went off to rec- 

 onnoitre. Going in pursuit of a troop of squirrels, we 

 were led to the edge of the glade without having been able 

 to reach them. A little way in the forest, Sumichrast espied 

 a small russet-colored owl, which suddenly disappeared in a 

 hollow at the foot of an old tree. We all kept quiet for ten 

 minutes, in order to observe the bird's way of hunting. At 

 last it suddenly reappeared, and, standing motionless and 

 upright upon its legs at the entrance of its place of refuge, 

 it looked very like a sentinel on duty in his watch-box. 



* A celebrated Greek physician in the first century of the Christian era. 



