QUADRUPEDS. 43 
brought up. I fed it at first with milk, and afterward 
with baked meat mixed with rice. It soon became even 
tamer than a cat ; for it came when called, and followed 
me, though at liberty, in the country. One day I brought 
this animal a small water-serpent alive, being desirous to 
know how far his instinct would carry him against a 
being with which he was as yet totally unacquainted. 
His first emotion seemed to be astonishment mixed with 
anger, for his hair became erect ; but in an instant he 
slipped behind the reptile, and with remarkable swiftness 
and agility leaped upon its head, seized it, and crushed it 
between its teeth. This essay, and new food, seemed to 
have awakened in him his innate and destructive voracity, 
which till then had given way to the gentleness he had 
acquired from education. I had about my house several 
curious kinds of fowls, among which he had been brought 
up, and which, till then, he had suffered to go and come 
unmolested and unregarded : but a few days after, when 
he found himself alone, he strangled them every one, ate 
a little, and, as it appeared, drank the blood of two.". 
The mode in which the Ichneumon seizes a serpent is 
thus described by Lucan in his PharsaUa: 
Thus oft the Ichneumon, on the banks of Nile, 
Invades the deadly aspic by a wile ; 
While artfully his slender tail is played, 
The serpent darts upon the dancing shade ; 
Then turning on the foe with swift surprise, 
Full on the throat the nimble traitor flies, 
And in his grasp the panting serpent dies. 
