Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/626

 thought to be hardly limited by the capacity of its stomach. Gratuitous malevolence, according to current stories, has often induced this symbol of the tempter to bewitch dogs and cattle, merely for the sake of testing the efficacy of its magic eyes first, and of its poison afterward; nay, a colored deacon of Navasota, Texas, affirms that he himself was once charmed by a flat-bellied rattlesnake, and favored the local weekly with a circumstantial account of his adventure. On his way home from meeting he took a short cut across a field (a sweet-potato field his neighbors suspect), and was just in the act of climbing a fence when his eye was caught by a piercing glitter in the weeds, a sudden, flash-like gleam that went through him like an electric shock, and made him grab the top rail with a convulsive grip. He tried to jump down, but could not; his legs were paralyzed, and a feeling of numbness began to creep up his body and toward his heart, while his eyes became so rigid that he could not even wink. He found that he could howl, which he did, with all his might; but, instead of being scared, the reptile wagged his tail, and came a little nearer. He gave himself up for lost, when he suddenly thought of a big prayer-book in his pocket, and in the moment when the serpent braced itself for a spring, he hurled at its head a copy of Baxter's "Saint's Rest" (Tract Society edition, 8vo), which, either by its weight or by its orthodox vigor, staggered the fiend for a second or two, during which the deacon effected his escape. The bird and squirrel stories are occasionally varied by a similar termination: the arrival of the witness broke the spell, and the squirrel hopped off, rejoicing; or the linnet perched upon the shoulder of the deponent, and twittered eloquently to express its gratitude for his timely intervention.

Only the insanity of the middle ages could excuse such superstitions; but that the subject has its difficulties is demonstrated by the variety of conjectures which have been offered for its elucidation. The serpent-charm fable has engaged the attention of different ancient and modern philosophers, but their treatment of the question is mostly what logicians call anatreptic, i. e., refuting without concluding anything in the affirmative, and the theories of professional zoölogists are somewhat inconsistent and unsatisfactory. Bichat speaks of a stupefying effluvium (exhalaison hypnotique) by which some reptiles benumb their victims; and Van der Hoeven suggests that the above-described suicidal infatuation of birds and rodents may be nothing but the well known self-sacrificing courage of the nest-mothers in defense of their helpless brood; while some modern ophiologists (Keyserling, Cabanis, and Dr. Hitchcock) have rejected the idea that such sluggish reptiles as moccasins and rattlesnakes—unless assisted by accident or the artificial arrangements of captivity—could capture more agile animals than frogs or moles.

But the dissection of swollen rattlesnakes has revealed more feathers than moleskins, and the prairie moccasins of Kansas and Arizona would