oathsome, in the
scale of being; the links between dead matter and animation drift
everywhere unseen. But it is the strength of the base element that is so
dreadful in the serpent; it is the very omnipotence of the earth. That
rivulet of smooth silver, how does it flow, think you? It literally rows
on the earth, with every scale for an oar; it bites the dust with the
ridges of its body. Watch it, when it moves slowly. A wave, but without
wind! a current, but with no fall! all the body moving at the same
instant, yet some of it to one side, some to another, or some forward,
and the rest of the coil backwards, but all with the same calm will and
equal way, no contraction, no extension; one soundless, causeless, march
of sequent rings, and spectral processions of spotted dust, with
dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle it, the
winding stream will become a twisted arrow; the wave of poisoned life
will lash through the grass like a cast lance.* It scarcely breathes
with its one lung (the other shriveled and abortive); it is passive
to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone; yet "it can
outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the
athlete, and crush the tiger."** It is a divine hieroglyph of the
demoniac power of the earth, of the entire earthly nature. As the bird
is the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed power of the
dust; as the bird is the symbol of the spirit of life, so this is the
grasp and sting of death.

* I cannot understand this swift forward motion of serpents. The seizure
of prey by the constrictor, though invisibly swift, is quite simple in
mechanism; it is simply the return to its coil of an opened watch-spring,
and is just as instantaneous. But the steady and continuous motion,
without a visible fulcrum (for the whole body moves at the same instant,
and I have often seen even small snakes glide as fast as I could walk),
seems to involve a vibration of the scales quite too rapid to be
conceived. The motion of the crest and dorsal fin of the hippocampus,
which is one of the intermediate types between serpent and fish, perhaps
gives some resemblance of it, dimly visible, for the quivering turns the
fin into a mere mist. The entrance of the two barbs of a bee's sting by
alternate motion, "the teeth of one barb acting as a fulcrum for the
other," must be something like the serpent motion on a small scale.
** Richard Owen.