Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/678

660 powers and qualities of the animal, but the utter impossibility of such feats of expectoration would seem self-evident to the most untrained observer. One not familiar with the unreasonable horror which usually impels people to flee from even the most harmless snake might infer from the form of this injunction that the much-slandered reptiles are frequently kept as pets, and are therefore on such terms of familiarity with human beings as to make it easily possible for this fabled spitting into the mouth to occur. In Peabody, Mass., I have heard of a notion that I have not met with elsewhere—viz., that a snake will not go near where geraniums grow.

A physician formerly from De Kalb County, Ill., reports that illiterate people there believe that a whiff, however slight, of the breath of the "blow-snake" (Heterodon platyrrhinus) is "sure death." A stalwart young man, while out hunting, has been known to faint simply because he fancied that a "blow-snake," which his companion was teasing, had reached him with its fatal breath. The blow-snake of Illinois is variously known in other localities as hog-nose, flat-head, viper, and puff-adder. This quite harmless snake affords what I think we may unquestionably call a fine example of protective resemblance, for so cunningly does he mimic the appearance and behavior of some really venomous snakes that his threatening aspect in general strikes terror into the beholder. In Maine, if a cow that has been grazing gives less milk than usual, or than is expected, it is often believed that the common garter-snake has sucked the cow. This strange belief, doubtless, is of remote origin, as it is very common among the housewives of the Russian peasantry.

How great a place not serpents alone, but other reptiles, and batrachians as well, have occupied in the popular imagination as possessors of magical powers, is well shown by the composition of the witches' hell-broth in "Macbeth":

 Round about the caldron go, In the poisoned entrails throw. Toad that under cold stone Days and nights hast thirty-one Sweltered venom sleeping; got, Boil thou first i' the charmèd pot!

Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog. Wool of bat and tongue of dog. Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and owlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."