Even our own island, although serpents do not exist in it--a blessing for which, if we are to put faith in legendary lore, we have to thank St Patrick--has numberless legends and tales of crocks of treasure at the bottom of deep, deep lakes, or in dark and gloomy caves, in inaccessible and rocky mountains, guarded by a fierce and wakeful snake, a sleepless serpent, whose eyes are never closed, and who never for a second abated of his watchful care of the treasure-crock, of which he had originally been appointed guardian;[1] and, further, we are told how the daring and inventive genius of the son of Erin has often found out a mode of putting a “_comether_” on the “big sarpint, the villain,” and haply closing his eyes in slumber, while he succeeded in possessing himself of the hoard which by his cunning and bravery he had so fairly won; in other words, _charming_ the snake and possessing himself of the spoil. Having thus glanced at the antiquity and wide spread of serpent-charming, I shall proceed to lay before you a short description of the mode in which the spell is cast over the animals by the modern jugglers of Arabia and India. Of all the Indian serpents, next to the Cobra Minelle, the Cobra Capella, or hooded snake (_Coluber Naja_), called in India the “Naig,” and also “spectacle snake,” is the most venomous. It derives its names of _hooded_ and _spectacle_ snake from a fold of skin resembling a hood near the head, which it possesses a power of enlarging or contracting at pleasure; and in the centre of this hood are seen, when it is distended, black and white markings, bearing no distant or fanciful likeness to a pair of spectacles. The mode of charming, or, at all events, all that is to be seen or understood by the spectators, consists in the juggler playing upon a flute or fife near the hole which a snake has been seen to enter, or which his employers have otherwise reason to suppose the reptile inhabits. The serpent will presently put forth his head, a portion of his body will shortly follow, and in a few minutes he will creep forth from his retreat, and, approaching the musician, rear himself on his tail, and by moving his head and neck up and down or from side to side, keep tolerably accurate time to the tune with which his ears are ravished.