qualified to form them, and who have had experience of teaching, as
to the most obvious divisions of character to be found among school
children. The replies have differed, but those on which most stress
was laid were connected with energy, sociability, desire to attract
notice, truthfulness, thoroughness, and refinement.

The varieties of the emotional constitution and of likings and
antipathies are very numerous and wide. I may give two instances
which I have not seen elsewhere alluded to, merely as examples of
variation. One of them was often brought to my notice at the time
when the public were admitted to see the snakes 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