Hindus are exceedingly ingenious in extracting fangs, stings, etc., and I have heard from many independent sources that snakes are never exhibited in public unless their fangs are first extracted. It may interest the reader to learn that my sister, when a little girl, took a great liking to bees, and desired to play with them. My father and mother were in Calcutta at the time, and bees were plentiful. Accordingly, my father commissioned one of the servants to extract the stings from a number of bees, which he did with great skill, and apparently with no lasting injury to the bee. My sister then had a whole room full of bees to play with, while quite free from danger herself. I mention this to show how ingenious Hindus are in handling reptiles and insects of the sort, thus proving that it would be quite possible for them to extract the fangs from any serpent. The fangs once extracted, and the snakes fed upon milk, and perhaps more or less drugged and charmed by the music, we can very readily see that it would be no very difficult feat for the snake charmer to handle them in any manner desired. It is a well-known fact that snakes and many other animals may be hypnotised and rendered more or less cataleptic by means of passes and various manipulations. Sextus, in his _Hypnotism_, devotes many pages to this subject. It is probable that, when a snake is stiffened out to its fullest extent, and remains stiff, it cannot be distinguished from a stick at a first casual glance. Perhaps this may bear some resemblance to the priests who performed before Pharaoh, “changing their rods to serpents” before his eyes. At all events, I quote the following passage, which seems to bear a distinct resemblance to that incident, and has the advantage of being “recorded at first hand,” and is by no means so “remote” as the other tale! It runs as follows: “Sitting one morning on the verandah, an aged magician approached and asked permission to perform some of his tricks. As I was in a humor to be amused, I told him to go ahead. He asked me to loan him the walking-stick which I carried. He waved this over his head two or three times and exclaimed: ‘No good; too big; can’t do,’ and handed the stick back to me, which, as I grasped it, changed into a loathsome, wriggling snake in my hand. Of course, I immediately dropped it. The magician smiled, picked up the snake by the middle, whirled it around in the air, and handed it back to me. As I refused to take it, he said, ‘All right, no bite,’ and behold it was my stick.”[3] I think the similarity of narrative should at least prove suggestive and interesting. [3] _Secrets of Mahatma Land Explained._ p. 49. VOLUNTARY INTERMENT. Let us now turn to a consideration of those feats of “voluntary interment” so often referred to.