race would feel much as I do; but the remainder do not. I have
questioned numbers of persons of both sexes, and have been
astonished at the frequency with which I have been assured that they
had no shrinking whatever from the sight of the wriggling mysterious
reptile. Some persons, as is well known, make pets of them; moreover,
I am told that there is no passage in Greek or Latin authors
expressive of that form of horror which I myself feel, and which may
be compared to what is said to be felt by hydrophobic sufferers at
the undulating movements of water. There are numerous allusions in
the classics to the venom fang or the crushing power of snakes, but
not to an aversion inspired by its form and movement. It was the
Greek symbol of Hippocrates and of healing. There is nothing of the
kind in Hebrew literature, where the snake is figured as an
attractive tempter. In Hindu fables the cobra is the ingenious and
intelligent animal, corresponding to the fox in ours. Serpent worship
was very widely spread. I therefore doubt whether the antipathy to
the snake is very common among mankind, notwithstanding the
instinctive terror that their sight inspires in monkeys.

The other instance I may adduce is that of the horror of blood which
is curiously different in animals of the same species and in the
same animals at different times. I have had a good deal of
experience of the behaviour of oxen at the sight of blood, and found
it to be by no means uniform. In my South African travels I relied
chiefly on half-wild slaughter oxen to feed my large party, and
occasionally had to shoot one on every second day. Usually the rest
of the drove paid no particular heed to the place of blood, but at
other rare times they seemed maddened and performed a curious sort
of war-dance at the spot, making buck-leaps, brandishing their horns,
and goring at the ground. It was a grotesque proceeding, utterly