aution is omitted, it will
revive during the night and come and coil itself on the chest of its
murderer.

Finally a council is held and a unanimous resolution recorded that
deceased was a serpent of the deadliest kind. This is not a lie, for
they believe it; but in the great majority of cases it is an untruth. Of
our two hundred and thirty-seven kinds of snakes only forty-four are
ranked by naturalists as venomous, and many of these are quite incapable
of killing any animal as large as a man. Others are very rare or local.
In short, we may reckon the poisonous snakes with which we have any
practical concern at four kinds, and the chance of a snake found in the
house belonging to one of these kinds stands at less than one in ten.

It is a sufficiently terrible thought, however, that there are even four
kinds of reptiles going silently about the land whose bite is certain
death. If they knew their powers and were maliciously disposed, our life
in the East would be like Christian's progress through the Valley of the
Shadow of Death. But the poisonous snakes are just as timid as the rest,
and as little inclined to act on the offensive against any living
creature except the little animals on which they prey. Even a trodden
worm will turn, and a snake has as much spirit as a worm. If a man
treads on it, it will turn and bite him. But it has no desire to be
trodden on. It does its best to avoid that mischance, and, I need
scarcely say, so does a man unless he is drunk. When both parties are
sincerely anxious to avoid a collision, a collision is not at all likely
to occur, and the fact is that, of all forms of death to which we are
exposed in India, death by snake-bite is about the one which we have
least reason to apprehend.

During a pretty long residence in India I have heard of only one
instance of an Englishman being killed by a snake. It was in Manipur,
and I read of it in the newspapers. During the same time I have heard of
only one death by lightning and one by falling into the fermenting vat
of a brewery, so I suppose these accidents are equally uncommon. Eating
oysters is much more fatal: I have heard of at least four or five deaths
from that cause.

The natives are far more exposed to danger from snakes than we are,
because they go barefoot, by night as well as day, through fields and
along narrow, overgrown footpaths about their villages. The tread of a
barefooted man does not make noise enough to warn a snake