Nor are there wanting examples of the same power exercised by the common Snake of our own country. I content myself with the following two, both of very recent record:—
"Up the hill above Tyneham," writes the Rev. Henry Bond, last August, "towards the sea, I was struck by the shrill cry and fluttering agitation of a common hedge-sparrow, in a whitethorn bush. Regardless of my presence, its remarkable motions were continued, getting, at every hop from bough to bough, lower and lower down in the bush. Drawing nearer, I saw a common snake coiled up, but having its head erect, watching the sparrow; the moment the snake saw me it glided away, and the sparrow flew off with its usual mode of flight."[173]
This anecdote brings out another by Mr John Henry Belfrage, of Muswell Hill:—"When proceeding down the avenue here one morning, at a turn in the path I saw a robin, which appeared to me spell-bound, so much so as to allow a much closer approach than is usual even with that boldest of the feathered tribe. On going nearer I perceived what I took to be the cause, in a large common snake, which was lying coiled up on one side of the path, with its head a little raised. My appearance broke the spell, and the robin flew away; at the same time, the snake dropped its head and assumed a perfectly inert appearance."[174]
A writer in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago thus reports the mesmeric faculty exercised upon a certainly somewhat unlikely subject:—"On approaching an almost dry drain, I saw a snake slowly extending his coils, raising his head, and steadfastly gazing on what I saw to be an eel of about a foot in length. The eel was directly opposite to the snake, and glance seemed to meet glance, when the snake, having the requisite proximity, darted on the eel and caught it about an inch behind the head, and carried it off; but the captor was soon himself a captive, for with a blow on his head I secured both."[175]
The mystery is, as usual in such cases, attempted to be explained away. Man does not like mystery; scientific man least of all: it is humbling to the pride of science to be obliged to confess that there exists anything unaccountable to the initiated. Mr W. C. L. Martin thus "explains" the statements of Dr A. Smith, and all such accounts:—"There is nothing mysterious in all this; the snake does not mesmerise its prey, but merely so terrifies it as to stupify it; besides, the victim may feel an impulse similar to that which urges many nervous persons on the edge of a precipice, or top of a lofty tower, to throw themselves down headlong, and which we have heard such describe as resisted with difficulty; so may the panic-struck bird feel an impulse to rush into danger which it might escape by flight."[176]
And again:—"Fear, amounting to panic, solicitude for its young, and efforts to drive away the dreaded intruder, leading the bird to venture too closely to the snake for its own safety, produce the results erroneously attributed to the Reptile's fancied power of fascination by its glance, or by some mystic property."[177]
Dr Barton, of Philadelphia, who, at the close of the last century, published a memoir on the fascinating powers attributed to certain serpents, advocated the same views. He considered that in almost every instance the supposed power was exerted on birds at the particular season of nidification, and that the whole hypothesis originated in the στοργη which prompts them to protect their eggs or young. No doubt some of the instances which have been reported as examples of fascination are capable of such an explanation, but surely not all; and the fallacy, here again, as in so many parallel cases, lies in the advocating of some theory which will cover a certain number of the facts, and the ignoring of all such as will not be so accounted for. Is it to be supposed that Dr A. Smith could not distinguish between the condition of involuntary paralysis of the faculties which he says he has often seen, and the insane boldness of nesting birds? Had the mice, seen by Mr Pullen, had the frog, young ones to protect? Or the squirrel mentioned by Kalm? or the mouse seen by Le Vaillant? or the eel in the drain? But what is the value of a hypothesis,—so far as its claims to solve this question are concerned,—which will not touch these cases? When Mr Martin denies that there is anything mysterious in the matter, and in the same sentence admits that "the victim may feel an impulse to rush into the danger which it might escape," he just yields the whole point. I venture to affirm that this is something mysterious, something totally unaccountable. I ask what, and whence, and why, this strange impulse that overcomes the first of all instincts, the prime law of self-preservation?
It does not explain the cause of the phenomenon, though it possibly helps us to determine its proper seat, to learn that fascination belongs to other animals besides the serpent tribes. We shall perhaps not err if we conclude that the peculiarity resides not in the object, but in the subject; that it is a mental emotion capable of being excited by objects having little in common except the death-terror which they excite. I have no doubt that it is a phase of extreme terror; the singularity of the phenomenon consists in the reversal of ordinary instinctive laws which it induces. My readers will probably be interested in the details of some cases in which the exciters of the emotion were animals other than serpents. Here is one, apparently related with care and truthfulness, though anonymous, in which the fascinator was as unlikely as can be well imagined to excite, and the fascinatee to feel, the emotion:—
"One evening, being seated in a room at Garrackpore, the window of which was open, and the ceiling on one side sloped downwards towards the window, my attention was attracted by a butterfly which chanced to fly into the room. I observed its motions for a minute or two, when I thought there was something that appeared unnatural in them, and the insect began to dart to and fro in one direction, occasionally, however, varying its flight about the room. I looked up to see what it could possibly be at, and instantly observed an ordinary-sized lizard on the cloth of the upper ceiling. I had not even then the most distant idea of what was really going on; but seeing the butterfly dart every now and then at the lizard, I supposed it in play, till its motions became less quick and animated. The lizard remained all this time immovable, but at last suddenly shifted its ground to the sloping part of the ceiling. The motions of the butterfly became still more languid, until at length, to my utter surprise, I saw the lizard open its mouth, and the butterfly flew directly into it. The lizard was about half a minute swallowing it, wings and all. Until the last act of this curious scene, though I well knew the lizard's object, I supposed it would probably make a leap at the butterfly, yet had no idea of its succeeding, and expected to see the butterfly fly away. Had I had an idea of the cause, I should have broken the charm.
"From that moment I never had the least doubt of the power of fascination: that power I conceive to be terror, which, if the object was sufficiently terrible, I believe would act equally on man or any other creature."[178]