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Show A Poisonous Monarch. A monarch among poisonous snakes is the enormous hamadryad, Avhich grows to be as much as 14 feet in length and is so fierce that it will sometimes attack and even chase any one who ventures near to its nest. Native snake charmers, who will handle the fiercest cobras fearlessly, fear-lessly, are usually loath to touch a hamadryad, ha-madryad, though I have occasionally seen a large specimen of this venomous reptile in their bags. It lays its eggs in a heap of decaying leaves, which it collects col-lects for the purpose, and sits upon the top to keep off intruders. A road through the jungle will sometimes be closed against all comers by a pair of these snakes, and woe betide the unfortunate traveler who stumbles unawares upon the nest. The hamadryad feeds largely upon other snakes, hut it is fortunately somewhat rare. Curiously enough, it is not always aggressive. Indeed it sometimes some-times happens that it is quite unwilling to strike. Superficially it 19 not unlike a Harmless rock snake, and not very long ago in Burmah a man brought one in from the jungle and kept it loose in his house for some days under the impression im-pression that it was one of these creatures. crea-tures. During the whole of its captivity it never attempted .to bite any one, and its captor,- who had been familiarly pulling pull-ing it about by tlw tail, Was only "apprised "ap-prised of his mistake by a forest officer W7ho happened to turn up and who knew a good deal about snakes. It is easy to imagine the haste with which the amateur ama-teur snake charmer proceeded to dispose of his captive. McClure's Magazine. Mongolian Magic. These Taichinar Mongols are much eriven to all forms of mafric. Storm dis pelling they appear to. have learned from the K'amba Tibetans, but the origin of some of their other practices is not so clear. Certain among them, they claim, can cause a person to be stricken ill or can even compass his death. After having hav-ing procured a few hairs, a nail paring or something from the person of the intended in-tended victim, they make a little image of him in flour, and in this stick the relic. Then it suffices to prick the head, heart, lungs or limbs of the effigy to cause acute pains to be felt by the original orig-inal in the same portion of his body. Of course one must recite certain potent charms the while. Iu them lies tha secret se-cret of success. I am not aware that this mode of bewitching a person, so well known in the western world in ancient and media3val times, obtains to any great extent in Asia. Personally I have never met it elsewhere. W. Woodvllle Rockhill in Century. |
