od suggestion.

[Illustration: AN EARLY WORM.]

[Illustration: HOW'S THE GLASS?]

[Illustration: THE FASCINATED RAT.]

And this is why nothing loves a snake. It is not because the snake is
feared, but because it is incomprehensible. The talk of its upas-like
influence, its deadly fascination, is chiefly picturesque humbug. Ducks
will approach a snake curiously, inwardly debating the possibility of
digesting so big a worm at one meal; the moving tail-tip they will peck
at cheerfully. This was the sort of thing that one might have observed
for himself years ago, here at the Zoo; at the time when the snakes
lived in the old house in blankets, because of the unsteadiness of the
thermometer, and were fed in public. Now the snakes are fed in strict
privacy lest the sight overset the morals of visitors; the killing of a
bird, a rabbit, or a rat by a snake being almost a quarter as unpleasant
to look upon as the killing of the same animal by a man in a farmyard or
elsewhere. The abject terror inspired by the presence of a snake is such
that an innocent rat will set to gnawing the snake's tail in default of
more usual provender; while a rabbit placed with a snake near
skin-shedding time will placidly nibble the loose rags of epidermis
about the snake's sides.

The pig treats the snake with disrespect, not to say insolence; nothing,
ophidian or otherwise, can fascinate a pig. If your back garden is
infested with rattlesnakes you should keep pigs. The pig dances
contemptuously on the rattlesnake, and eats him with much relish,
rattles and all. The last emotion of the rattlesnake is intense
astonishment; and astonishment is natural, in the circumstances. A
respectable and experienced rattlesnake, many years established in
business, has been accustomed to spread panic everywhere within ear and
eye shot; everything capable of motion has started off at the faintest
rustle of his rattles, and his view of animal life from those
expressionless eyes has invariably been a back view, and a rapidly
diminishing one. After a life-long experience of this sort, to be
unceremoniously rushed upon by a common pig, to be jumped upon, to be
flouted and snouted, to be treated as so much swill, and finally to be
made a snack of--this causes a feeling of very natural and painful
surprise in the rattlesnake. But a rattlesnake is only surprised in this
way once, and he is said to improve the pork.

[Illustration: THE DISRESPECTFUL PIG.]

As a _to