ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 



263 



they secrete, and can throw around them to a certain distance at pleasure. 

 He advances various facts in support of this opinion, and observes, that 

 the vapour produces a sickening and stupefying effect ; and alludes to a 

 negro who, from a peculiar acuteness of smell, could discover a rattle- 

 snake at a distance of two hundred feet when in the exercise of this power, 

 from his smell being affected by it ; and who, on following such indication, 

 always found some animal drawn within its vortex, and struggling with 

 its influence.* 



Should this asserted fact be confirmed by others of a like kind, it will 

 give us an insight into the nature, not only of the present, but of siuiilar 

 fascinations, which we stand much in need of. The greater acuteness of 

 smell in barbarous and uncultivated tribes than m those of civilized na- 

 tions, we have already had occasion to notice, and have endeavoured to 

 account for.J In some instances it is highly probable that the emanation 

 is alone perceptible by the animals that are overpowered by it ; which 

 may be the case in the example of serpent-charmers, and sometmies in 

 the fascination of serpents themselves. In other examples, and especially 

 those of artificial emanations, there is an odour of which every one is 

 sensible, though its captivating power is confined to the particular tribe to 

 which it is directed : and I now allude to the mode of charming trout and 

 other fresh-water fishes, by illiningthe hand with assafoetida, to which in- 

 deed we had occasion to refer in a former lecture.^ The trout, in its in- 

 toxication of delight, (for here the charm is acconipanied with a forcible 

 pleasure instead of a forcible pain,) resigns all caution, becomes dead to 

 its natural instinct, and so far from flyujg from the ensnaring hand when 

 introduced into the water, advances to it irresistibly, as the bird to the 

 jaws of the rattlesnake, and suffers itself to be laid hold of and fall a prey 

 to the decoyer. 



There is, hence, nothing in the accounts of these curious powers of fas- 

 cination that is hostile to our own experience : and though our own senses 

 may not be fine enough to detect the medium of action in every instance, 

 whether natural or artificial, we have some reason for ascribing it gene- 

 rally to an overwhelming emanation, capable of leading captive the or- 

 dinary instincts and faculties of the animals upon which it is exercised^ and 

 hereby of hurrying them headlong to destruction. Catesby, the best natu- 

 ral historian of North America, while admitting that he had never wit- 

 nessed an instance of the fascination of the rattlesnake, asserts that he had 

 received oae uniform account of it from a variety of pei:sons who had wit- 

 nessed it ; nor is it, indeed, denied by Dr. Mead or Professor Barton, but 

 only attempted to be accounted for upon principles which will not apply, 

 or are not adequate. 



In truth, the rattlesnake does not seem to be the only serpent that is 

 possessed of this extraordinary influence. The American writers con- 

 tend that the larger snakes of various kinds have a similar power. Dr. 

 Barrow, in his travels into the interior of South America, asserts this to 

 be a fact well known to almost every peasant in that quarter of the world ; 

 and Vaillant, in his travels into Africa, afl^irms that, at a place called 

 Swortland, beholding a shrike in the very act of fascination by a large 

 serpent at a distance, the fiery eyes and open mouth of which it was 

 gradually approaching with convulsive tremblings, and the most piteous 



* Journ. of Science, &c. No, xii. p. 374, t Ser. I. Lect. XV. 



: Sev. I, Lect. XV, 



