My Library

his skin is stuffed with straw and cotton, as when with his own proper flesh, blood, and bones. Innumerable experiments, instituted expressly to test this question, have been made, and it has been over and over again decided that the charming or fascinating power is just as strong after as previous to death. This has been settled by the actions of birds, who utter the same plaintive and pathetic cries, exhibit the same terror and other phenomena, in presence of a stuffed as in that of a living serpent. This is a strong point in my favor; but one that is still stronger, indeed quite irrefutable, shall now be adduced. Persons employed in the Jardin des Plants, and other zoological institutions, find it dangerous work to clean out the dens of certain serpents, even for weeks after the occupants have been removed, for the effluvium—which, I take it, you will not claim to be other than physical—which they have left behind, and which constantly exhales from the floor and sides of the den, is found to be identical with that aura or sphere which it is known they exhale when excited by the presence of prey; and the affects of this emanation from the den are precisely those that characterize the action of the living, present, excited snake. Now, these facts had long been noticed, and the results attributed to the fancy of the human subject, until, at length, an unusual circumstance led to the institution of a course of experiments to set