to training him to his performance. So much for the idea that the _dancing_ snakes are always deprived of their fangs--now as to the reality of the circumstance of the _wild_ serpents being drawn forth from their holes by the charmer’s pipe, and not being _tamed animals_ placed in those holes for the express purpose of deception. Perhaps the best refutation of this idea that I can adduce, will be found in a highly interesting account I received lately from a friend resident for many years in India, and who directed a more than ordinary degree of attention to snake-charmers and their feats; nay, not merely to them, but to every other description of magical rites, of which no land now furnishes so many wonder-working adepts as India, not even Egypt. He told me of men who would sow a seed of corn in a flower-pot, and by sundry mysterious incantations cause it to sprout, grow up, throw off leaves, bud, produce grain, and ripen, all within the space of an hour. He told me of men who would turn an empty hamper upside down, and produce from thence shawls, jewels, strings of beads, muslin turbans, and, in short, any article the spectators chose to demand. He told me many other singular and wondrous stories; but, what at present is of more immediate importance, he gave me a singular account of serpent-charming. I need not recapitulate its details, as they precisely resemble those quoted in a former article: I need only observe, that he assured me he had examined the subject too closely, and had taken too many precautions to prevent the possibility of fraud, to admit of its being, in any one instance, practised upon him. He had sent a distance of fifty miles up the country for a snake-catcher, and had set him to work in a spot entirely unknown to all as the place he had selected, until he conducted them and the juggler thither; and he had dozens of times seen the reptiles drawn from their retreats by the sounds of the flute or fife, which they evidently derived extreme pleasure from hearing. It was my friend’s opinion that the chief agent in the operation of serpent-charming was music; the animals positively delighted in the sound of the soft instruments employed by the performers, and were by its influence lulled into a sort of pleasurable trance whenever the exciting cause was put in operation.