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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 unlike the usual behaviour of cattle. I only witnessed it once
elsewhere, and that was in the Pyrenees, where I came on a herd that was
being driven homewards. Each cow in turn, as it passed a particular spot,
performed the well-remembered antics. I asked, and learned that a cow
had been killed there by a bear a few days previously. The natural horror
at blood, and it may be the consequent dislike of red, is common
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