‘Lizzie,’ the heroine of chap. xxvi., was proved to be sensitive to disturbing noises, and her ophidian relatives are probably similarly affected. As to tune, any sharp sound will answer; and as to time, it is not the ‘music,’ but, as we have already hinted, the waving hand or knee, or bright colours used by the charmers, to which the movements of the serpents respond. This also is a subject quite worth scientific investigation.
A word in conclusion about the ‘fascination of the serpent’s eye,’ a fable of so remote a date that it is as hard as any to eradicate. Even scientific observers admit that there is a something that attracts the eyes of birds or small mammals such as squirrels, timid creatures which often stare fixedly at ourselves as much as at a snake. Dr. A. Smith says: ‘Whatever may be said in ridicule of fascination, it is nevertheless true that birds and even quadrupeds are, under certain circumstances, unable to retire from the presence of their enemies, and what is even more extraordinary, unable to resist the propensity to advance from a situation of actual safety into one of danger.[140] He has seen birds collect round the African tree snakes, particularly the Boomslange (described p. 407), and fly to and fro, shrieking, until one of them almost touches its lips.’ Exactly so. We are not told as much, but every one who knows anything of snake life will feel quite sure that those tree snakes were making good use of their delicate tongues in order to ascertain all they could about those enticing shriekers; and that the birds were equally desirous of knowing what dainty in the shape of worm or flitting creature that tongue might be. In the case of the rattlesnake the ‘fascinated’ birds are probably enticed by the insect they think they hear, as well as that they think they see, in the supposed worm wriggling so temptingly and vanishing so strangely. The snake remains rigidly still the while, the only moving thing being that investigating tongue.
My observations at the Zoological Gardens first led me to this conclusion. On the feeding days several years ago, when watching to detect the ‘fascination’ one had been led to expect, I noticed that the birds—even the sparrows and finches—were attracted by the tongue of the snake, and would stop when hopping about the cage and look intently and curiously on the vibrating tongue. Some would venture on a closer inspection, and remain gazing, or would even peck at it, until a movement of the snake told them that the motionless object from which that wriggling thing protruded was a living animal. Then they might hop away indifferently, happily unconscious that what they had perched on as a branch or a log was animated with a hungering after themselves.
Any further ‘spell,’ or ‘fascination,’ or attraction might be attributed to a soporific or paralytic rather than a pleasurable influence; and arising from the noxious breath of a venomous serpent, or the fixity of its eyes, never blinking. Horses, dogs, and other animals have an intuitive perception of the vicinity of a snake, and refuse to advance; is it therefore reasonable to conclude that the lesser animals are not similarly affected? It is serpent nature to wait motionless for its prey. Any creature coming unexpectedly upon that rigid object, with its fixed, glittering eyes, would, actuated by mingled alarm and curiosity, stop to make itself acquainted with the extraordinary sight, the only life or motion in which would be the tongue suddenly and silently appearing and disappearing. A bird might be beguiled within striking distance, or might stop spell-bound. We ourselves are sometimes impelled to approach an unaccountable yet terrifying object. Fear has also a paralyzing effect, and we remain motionless, breathless, with eyes as fixed as a serpent’s.
Observation of nature and an inquiry into causes will often present very commonplace reasons for what appears to savour of the marvellous. A snake has just made a meal of some fledgelings. The mother bird has witnessed her offspring vanishing by degrees, and she frantically hovers over the reptile, fluttering to and fro, and probably uttering cries of distress or of enticement, in the hope of her young ones’ return. Birds have been observed thus endeavouring to rescue a half-swallowed fledgeling. The naturalist at once comprehends the reason; the poet thinks the birds are ‘fascinated.’
I am not aware that any other ophiologist than Dr. Stradling, in discussing the ‘fascination’ idea, has attributed to the tongue of a snake an allurement in the shape of a prospective meal. In one of his papers to Land and Water (April 2, 1881) he described a hen that had been put into the cage for his anaconda’s dinner, making ‘a determined dab at the snake’s tongue, sometimes two or three dabs in quick succession,’ every time the quivering black line caught her eye. ‘Now why does she do that?’ he asks. ‘Certainly from no animosity towards the snake, in whose presence she has not the slightest consciousness of danger, as she was otherwise engaged in pecking up the maize that was in the cage. My own idea is that she mistakes the tongue for a wriggling worm,’ adds the observer in almost the very words I had used more than six years previously,[141] long before we had exchanged a word on the subject or were even acquainted. He further described in the same issue of Land and Water, and also in the Field (June 3, 1882), how a scarlet tanager in Costa Rica had been attracted out of a tree down close to a snake by its quivering tongue, the only moving thing about it. Dr. Stradling had seen a frog similarly snapping at the tongue of a snake, and thinks that one of the chief uses of the mysterious little organ is to attract insectivorous animals. My own observations prove the tongue to be a successful lure, which may go a good way towards explaining ‘fascination;’ but whether an intentional lure, any more than an intentional intimidation, as discussed in chap. v., I hesitate to affirm.
‘Fascination,’ then, may be sometimes imputed to curiosity, sometimes to an anticipated morsel. It may partake of fear, or it may be an involuntary approach; it may be the struggles of a poisoned creature unable to get away, or the maternal anxieties of a bird or small mammal whose offspring has fallen a victim to the snake. Divesting it of all poetry or magic, it will admit of several matter-of-fact, albeit sometimes tragic explanations.
