akes fed at the
Zoological Gardens. Rabbits, birds, and other small animals were
dropped in the different cages, which the snakes, after more or less
serpentine action, finally struck with their poison fangs or crushed
in their folds. I found it a horrible but a fascinating scene. We
lead for the most part such an easy and carpeted existence, screened
from the stern realities of life and death, that many of us are
impelled to draw aside the curtain now and then, and gaze for a
while behind it. This exhibition of the snakes at their feeding-time,
which gave to me, as it doubtless did to several others, a sense of
curdling of the blood, had no such effect on many of the visitors. I
have often seen people--nurses, for instance, and children of all
ages--looking unconcernedly and amusedly at the scene. Their
indifference was perhaps the most painful element of the whole
transaction. Their sympathies were absolutely unawakened. I quote
this instance, partly because it leads to another very curious fact
that I have noticed as regards the way with which different persons
and races regard snakes. I myself have a horror of them, and can
only by great self-control, and under a sense of real agitation,
force myself to touch one. A considerable proportion of the English
race would feel much as I do; but the remainder do not. I have
questioned numbers of persons of both sexes, and have been
astonished at the frequency with which I have been assured that they
had no shrinking whatever from the sight of the wriggling mysterious
reptile. Some persons, as is well known, make pets of them; moreover,
I am told that there is no passage in Greek or Latin authors
expressive of that form of horror which I myself feel, and which may
be compared to what is said to be felt by hydrophobic sufferers at
the undulating movements of water. There are numerous allusions in
the classics to the venom fang or the crushing power of snakes, but
not to an aversion inspired by its form and movement. It was the
Greek symbol of Hippocrates and of healing. There is nothing of the
kind in Hebrew literature, where the snake is figured as an
attractive tempter. In Hindu fables the cobra is the ingenious and
intelligent animal, corresponding to the fox in ours. Serpent worship
was very widely spread. I therefore doubt whether the antipathy to
the snake is very common among mankind, notwithstanding the
instinctive terror that their sight inspires in monkeys.

The o