again brought into play as before, and the snake held down with its help while the hand grip was relaxed. The man meanwhile soothed it and steadied the seething coils with one hand and both naked feet. At last he thought that all was well and quickly released his hold with the fork. All the other snakes had been treated in an identical manner and had one and all slowly raised their heads to take in what was happening. We were expecting the hamadryad to behave in a similar way, but, like a flash, before the shutter release could be pressed, it was off straight for the hospital garden, separated from us by a wire fence. We all thought it had gone, but we had reckoned without Peter. Peter was a native Christian. He had been a Sweeper, I think, before his conversion, and now he assisted generally in the hospital. He was armed with a stick, and his movements were almost as quick as those of the snake. The latter was half through the fence when Peter caught its tail and with a mighty effort pulled the whole twelve feet back. Never have I heard anything like the hiss of fury with which the snake launched itself at him. Peter warded it off with his stick like a skilful fencer, but again the snake leapt (there is no other word) at him. Again Peter took its strike on his stick, and now the snake charmer pulled the brute back from Peter by its tail. He was promptly attacked in the same way, only to catch the strike on his stick exactly as Peter had done. The latter now came to the rescue once more by pulling the snake back as before only to be turned on again. And so it went on for several minutes. We managed to get a couple of photographs, but on each occasion the hood was presented sideways. At last the snake-charmer got his chance and like lightning slipped the fork on to the neck. The snake was held, picked up, and placed back into its box, when the lid was closed with a slam. Peter and the snake-charmer regarded the whole affair with ab-forg solute nonchalance, but their cool courage and swift decision saved a situation which might have been very uncomfortable. ret He was a curious fellow, that We snake-charmer-one of a very small caste. His family had been snakecharmers for generations, and he was absolutely happy at the hospital, although his pay was but ten rupees a month and the only shield between himself and death was his own quickness and dexterity. If a cure for snake-bite is to be effective, it must take place immediately, and even then it is not by any means certain. But no efforts are being spared, and we can but hope that a really efficient antivenine will be discovered in the near future. But even if it is, I doubt whether the death roll among the natives will be diminished appreciably. ciably. The afflicted are mostly simple jungle folk who know but little of Europeans and doctors, and as I have said before, there is never room for the smallest delay. Nothing can be more sad than this mortality, but the people most affected are amazingly apathetic about the danger, and their whole outlook on life will have to change before any remedy will have a chance of success. The rainy season is the most dangerous one. Then snakes seem to roam to a far greater extent, and walking through high grass without top-boots is a pastime to be avoided. I think that this is one of the most general ways in which natives get C 闯 It I prea bitten. They know the danger as well as anybody else, yet seem absolutely to disregard it. A stroll through grass bor bushes in the dark offers similar risks, and it is probable that the great percentage of fatal bites occur at night. I once had a fright that I have never forgotten. I had been out after blackbuck with a brother-officer. We had ridden out some seven miles from cantonments and, having left our horses at a village, had gone ahead on foot. We made a longish round and were returning to the village and our horses. It was now quite dark. The path led through crops of sugar-cane and cotton, and every now and then there would be an open space. We were crossing one of these and passing under a babul tree when I suddenly felt something hit my leg with a prick. It was too dark to see anything, and I walked on without stopping or thinking much about the incident. We had not gone fifty yards, however, before my leg seemed to be going quite numb. There was no pain, just numbness. I at once thought I must have been bitten by a snake. The numbness continued with every step, and I jerked out a sentence to my companion to the effect that I thought I had been bitten. We both stopped, and he struck a match. I saw a small brown excrescence on the puttie, and my relief can be well imagined when I caught hold of this and pulled out a great babul thorn nearly two inches in length. This thorn had gone straight into the muscle of my calf, and then broken off. I must have hit my leg against a fallen branch. As soon as the thorn was extracted all numbness vanished. Like most Europeans who have lived for any length of time in India I have killed some snakes of sorts, but not very many, although I once landed one with a trout rod. I was fishing some of those delightful streams in the Dun which are preserved by the Dehra Dun Angling Association, and was using a 10 ft. 6 in. trout rod and a fly spoon. I suddenly noticed a snake about three feet long enter the water some ten yards above me and start to swim across. My spoon fell just beyond it with the trace across its back. A strike and I had foul-hooked it. So far I had acted on what is to me an instinctive impulse to slay every snake I see, without thinking how I was going to dispose of my catch. It was soon dragged on to the stony bank, but then the difficulties commenced. There was no stick with which to dispatch it, and I could not possibly unhook it until it was dead. I do not think it was a poisonous variety, but all the same I was running no risks. I finally managed to kill it with stones. I have also slain snakes with both the official 'officers' weapons,' namely, sword and revolver. I do not think that many men can make this boast, but on neither occasion was there call for either heroic courage or the meanest skill. I was riding at the head of the battery on manœuvres near Delhi when I saw the grass move a few yards ahead. This movement seeming suspicious, I at once dismounted for a closer investigation, only to find a viper. My sword on my saddle was the nearest weapon and the most convenient one, so it was at once drawn and the viper was slaughtered. I may as well confess that this is the only occasion on which my sword has ever spilt blood. The revolver episode was equally tame. It was in the rains and I was awakened by my bearer soon after it was light, to be told that a snake was just outside the bungalow. Investigation showed a large karait lying in the drain running from my fellow-lodger's bathroom. From its position it was immune from attacks with sticks, which would only have beaten on the edges of the drain. The karait was in the act of swallowing a frog, and, as snakes are notoriously slow eaters, I knew it would stay there for some time. I accordingly fetched my revolver and, standing across both karait and drain, cut its head off at a range of about one foot. It was really funny to see the tenant of that half of the bungalow awake with a jump at the sound of a revolver shot within a few feet of his head. During the rains bungalows in India simply swarm with small frogs. They are not really much of a nuisance but are a quite possible source of danger, as snakes prefer a diet of frog to almost all else and there is a risk of their following the frogs indoors. Boards about a foot high nailed across all the doorways form an obstacle which the frogs cannot climb, and are very little trouble to nail in place. But the most extraordinary feat in the way of snake-killing of which I have ever heard was performed by an officer in my own brigade. He loathed all snakes with even more than common hatred and was ever seeking opportunities of revenging Eve. The brigade was returning from a field day across some sand hills when this bold spirit saw a large cobra dart into a rathole near the path. He at once flung himself off his horse at the hated reptile and just as it was disappearing seized it by the tail! The snake was unable to turn round in the narrow hole, and our friend held on until his trumpeter had handed him the hammer with which the adjutant used to be supposed to hammer in his aimingposts for giving the brigade the line of fire. It was the only weapon available but proved a very efficient one, as it was used for smashing the cobra's spine at the same time that it was this tho slowly and protestingly hauled back by main force. The snake was battered to bits and was dead before half the its length had been pulled out. 0 Apart from the value to the natural-h ist of the investigations of the character and habits of snakes, the work of the Institute contributes greatly to the intimate study of crystalloids and all colloids. The poisons have distinctive reactions on blood into which they are injected; some act, or appear to act, directly on the nervous centres; and the disentanglement of causes must in time throw light on the mechanism by which any 'poisons,' germinal or other, act on the living cells into which they come into contact. AN apartment on the seventh floor of a modern building in the Champsde-Mars quarter. The lift goes no higher than the fifth floor. This, however, is an unimportant detail, as the concierge has put a permanent placard on the lift door: "Temporarily out of order.' ho C hea If you have no head, says the proverb, you must use your legs. And if you are young and in love, you can mount seven flights as if on wings. Cyprien is twenty-two years old, a hero of the war, who married as soon as he was demobilized, his second cousin Lucienne. She is three years younger than he, and they are much in love! with each other. They were delighted to find, after a search of several months, this modern apartment which even contains two rooms. One is antichamber, dining room, drawing room, Lucienne's boudoir, and Cyprien's study. The other is bedroom, bathroom, dressing room. The rent for his delightful apartment is only six housand francs, plus the charges, and he young couple can do very nicely vith a maid of all work, who is always it hand. Ought not Lucienne and Cyprien to e perfectly happy under such cirumstances? They are. They quarrel ll day long, which is natural and roper. Sometimes they are reconiled, sometimes not. On this morning, holiday, they are going together, to unch in the country at one of Luienne's friend's who married a comrade of Cyprien. This other household, no ess young, rich, and favored by the gods, had the extraordinary luck to liscover in a Parisian suburb, a charmng villa of four rooms, with a garden welve yards long and eight yards vide. Cyprien has been ready for a long ime. He is waiting in the antichamber-drawing room-dining room, and has called to Lucienne several times, to which she has replied vaguely. He loses patience and speaks to Phemie, the servant. Cyprien: Phemie, would you be so extremely kind as to tell me if there is chance that Madame will be dressed soon. Phemie (giggling): Ah! Ah. . . Ah! Ah! . . . Ah! Ah! Cyprien (with the self control of an (x-aviator): Thank you very much. Phemie: Not in a week of Sundays! Madame is a long way from being ready, seeing that she has gone back to wed. Cyprien: Gone back to bed! Phemie: Certainly. If you don't elieve me, go and see for yourself. Oh, she's a card, Madame! So are you; you're a pair, the two of you! Cyprien (gently): Including you that makes three of a kind. But suppose you speak to me properly, in the third -person. Phemie: Monsieur and Madame are two cards. Cyprien (seized with a sudden fury, dashing into the bed room): Are you crazy Lucienne? We're going to the country for luncheon to-day, you know. When will you decide to get up? Lucienne: I can't get up. Lucienne: You have hidden my pearl necklace. Cyprien (shrugging his shoulders): Oh, that's it! I have n't hidden your pearl necklace. I put it away as I always do in my right slipper. I have no safety deposit box here, but I have my slipper. Where could a pearl necklace be safer than in a husband's slipper? I left it there by chance this morning because I went barefoot to the tub and immediately after my bath I put on my 250 franc shoes. (He bends over.) Here it is! Hullo! No! It is n't there any more. Oh yes, it's in the left slipper. Lucienne: Congratulations! You are so orderly! You don't even know in which slipper you put away my pearl necklace. A necklace that cost 275,000 francs! Cyprien: Oh come along! Let me put your beautiful necklace about your beautiful neck, dear lady. There you are! Now then, up you get, lazy girl who went back to bed after her bath. Lucienne (with a great deal of dignity): When you are quite through making an idiot of yourself, I can explain that in the first place I did not go back to bed after my bath, for the good reason that I did not take a bath. Cyprien: Why? Lucienne: Because I did n't want to catch my death of cold by bathing in ice water. Cyprien: But why should you? Lucienne: If you read the newspapers, you would know that there is a strike at the gas works. Cyprien: Well if you read them more carefully, you would know that there is a strike but that gas is supplied just the same. The pressure has never been as strong as this morning since the signing of the Peace Treaty, probably from the spirit of contradiction. Besides ah no, these feminine deceptions make me boil over! Did I take my bath? Did you hear me take it? Lucienne: Naturally. Cyprien: Did you hear me yell or groan as a highly civilized man will when he steps into ice water? No. Well, then, little girl, get up quickly, one, two, three! Do hurry! How late we shall be at the Durochards'! Lucienne: We are not going! Cyprien: We are not going? Lucienne: You don't expect me to go on foot from Paris to Becon-lesBruyeres? Cyprien: Evidently not, but you can choose between the railroad and the tramway. Lucienne (importantly): If you read the papers, you would know that there is a railroad and a tramway strike to-day. Lucienne: Because I have n't any- het thing to wear. Toul Cyprien: What do you mean, you perse have n't anything to wear? The dress and maker and the modiste were here Chris yesterday evening and brought you a to m dress and a new hat. I was almost hal caught myself; if they had brought Judge their bills I should have been in re trouble. You can certainly wear your re new hat and your new dress to the d Durochards'. Cyprien: Certainly there is a strike, but the service is normal. All the trains leave on schedule and most of them arrive. They have n't even called out the volunteer firemen, and I can prove it. I am a volunteer fireman myself. Look at me! Am I on a locomotive? No! Very well, since I'm not on a locomotive I can get into a first class compartment. Do hurry now, get dressed, and we'll take the first train. Lucienne (in tears): But I can't! Pr Lucienne (still crying): How stupid perse men are! Don't you understand that ad the dressmaker and the modistei brought me yesterday, May 12th, the us dress and the hat which I ordered in R October for last winter. Naturally Id did n't take them. I don't want to be ey ridiculous. I can't go to the country in May in a winter suit and a winter th hat. Cyprien (exploding): Oh, no, it can't be done! It can't be done! Very well, my dear. We won't go to the Durochards', but I'll go to my lawyer's. Lucienne: To get a divorce? It's perfectly useless to try. If you read your newspapers, you would know that all the lawyer's clerks and court officials have struck. So just go ahead and try to make me sign a paper. I defy you to do it. A marriage can't be dissolved these days until the lawyers have their rights. You might pass me the cigarettes. [The New Statesman] PERSECUTION They It is natural to persecute. That is what good people seldom realize. They never dream that they are guilty of persecution when they are taking steps against people whom they regard as wholly bad. They believe that persecution means the maltreatment of al am G |