21 6 
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL. 
to testify that I have found this poor Green Snake to be 
the most harmless and the gentlest of living creatures. 
And its tameness is charming. It seems to have no fear. 
This is because it is green. 
If you meet a black snake it flees for its life, and if you 
meet a viper, it hisses and dares you to touch it. Were 
the Green Snake to do either of these things you would 
kill it, but because it is green it just does nothing, and 
you brush past the leaves among which it hangs and 
never know it is there. So one animal is saved by wari- 
ness, but another by the want of it, just as one man pushes 
his way through the world by impudence, and another, 
like Uriah Heep, by ’umbleness. I meet with fresh 
instances of the same thing every few days, with moths, 
leaf insects, stick insects, spiders, dressed in strange dis- 
guises, which would inevitably be eaten if they fought or 
fled, but escape because they do neither. Seeing these 
things from day to day, one slowly comes to take in the 
truth that lies in that phrase of Darwin’s, “ The Struggle 
for Existence.” 
