pleasure, has been thought to have a head at either extremity of its
reptile body, but close inspection proves this opinion false. The
fascinating power of the _Rattlesnake_, of which so many stories have in
times past been related, and which was asserted to exist in its glittering
eyes, has been of late years resolved into that extreme nervous terror of
its victim (at sight of so certain a foe) which deprives it of the power
of motion, and causes it to fall, an unresisting prey, into the reptile's
jaws. We may here pause to observe, _en passant_, that the antipathy which
people of all ages and nations have felt against every reptile of the
serpent tribe, from the harmless worm to the hosts of deadly "dragons"
which infest the torrid zone, and the popular opinion that all are
venomous, often in spite of experience, seems to be not so much
superstition, as a terror of the species, implanted, since the fall, in
our bosoms, by the same Divine Being who at that period pronounced the
serpent to be the most accursed beast of the field.

(_To be continued_.)

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.


Nothing if not political appears to be the order of the new magazine and
other literary enterprises of the present day. Is this good policy in