To understand the worship paid to serpents we must remember that the earliest feeling which mankind had of a relation to invisible powers must have been a compound of dread and gratitude, and in the mingling of these emotions dread predominated. The dreaded serpent alone, says Fergusson,[9] without arms or wings or any of the usual appliances of locomotion, still moves with singular celerity and grace; its form is full of elegance, its colors are often very beautiful, its eyes are bright and piercing. A serpent can creep, spring, climb, swim, expand, constrict, suspend itself by the tail, burrow in the ground, and even raise its body almost erect. Its muscular irritability is remarkably great and persistent, depending on its nervous energy. The heart palpitates long after death; the jaws open and shut even when the head is severed from the body; the outer skin is shed more than once, and the ancients believed that by this means the snake renewed its youth. It does not need food for long periods when casting its skin. It often changes color at will, and, above all, its longevity is so great as still to make the superstitious ascribe to it immortality. It makes no nest (except in the case of the python, who hatches her eggs by the heat of her own body); no food is stored for the young, who are born with all powers in full perfection. Then the poison of a serpent is so deadly and subtile that it excites in the heart of the savage the greatest dread and mystery, and even more startling and terrible than the poison of the cobra is the flash-like spring and fascination of the boa constrictor, the instantaneous embrace, the crushed-out life,--all accomplished faster than the human eye can follow. These are the powers that must have impressed the primitive races of the East with dread and terror, and wherever the serpent was found, there he seems to have been propitiated by man with prayers, supplications, and all forms of worship. It is perhaps strange that the serpent in the early period of the worship was not so much dreaded as loved--whether from a feeling that it was not as deadly as it has in its power to be, or for some other reason, it is now impossible to determine. However, in the history of this peculiar religion it is found that in course of time the serpent began to be regarded as the harbinger of good gifts, the teacher of wisdom, the symbol of subtlety, the oracle of the future, and even the healer of all diseases.