THE GREEN TREE SNAKE . 
215 
effects, curves and twists and graceful swaying motions, 
all tending nowhere. 
Meanwhile I, who am not troubled with local self- 
government, was making substantial progress homewards. 
I passed several carts, the cartmen looking out from under 
their blankets with drowsy wonder. They never knew 
before that Sahebs practised snake-charming. When I 
had found a nice grassy plot, I lowered my stick, and 
the snake slid away, wondering where all the agitation 
of the last half hour had landed it. 
No animal has been used by Europeans in India to 
graft so many superstitions upon as the Green Tree 
Snake. It is the “ Whip Snake ” of commerce, the Cor- 
ralillo of Madame Blavatsky. No matter whether it bites 
you with its mouth or whips you with its tail, your doom 
is sealed. It hangs from the branches of a tree on the 
wayside, watching for some unsuspecting passenger’s up- 
lifted eye, that it may drop into it. You may have 
observed that no M.P. travelling through India ever up- 
lifts the eye, except metaphorically. He has been warned. 
Now I would not willingly deprive even an M.P. or 
a Theosophist of any of the romance of travel, but we 
owe a duty to all our fellow-creatures, and I feel bound 
