This is the snake that the Indian snake-charmers lure out of its hole by playing on a sort of pipe, and then catch and handle with impunity. I, at least, believe that they can do so, and also that they are able, should they chance to be bitten, to cure the bite by applying to it a curious substance, which is called a snake-stone. I believe it because one of these snake-stones has found its way into Africa—probably through the Portuguese—and there I have seen it in the possession of a Dutch family of the name of De Lange, who, though poor people, once refused fifty pounds for it. This proves their belief in its efficacy, and that belief has been founded upon a number of trials, every one of which was successful. Here is one of them—I quote it from my brother’s work, _Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa_, pp. 14-15: “De Lange told us that the value of the stone was well known in the district, as it had saved the lives of so many people—whom he named—and several horses. Amongst other names he mentioned that of a daughter of an old elephant-hunter, named Antony Fortman, who, he averred, had been bitten by a cobra some years before, when quite a child. As the stone had to be sent for, it had only reached her, he said, just in time to save her life. Two years later, in 1877, this story, at any rate, met with a curious confirmation. At that time Antony Fortman was at Tati, in Matabililand, with his family, his eldest daughter being a girl about sixteen years of age. I had quite forgotten about the snake-stone, when one day, the conversation turning on snakes, Antony Fortman said to his daughter, ‘Turn up your sleeve, and show Mr. Selous where the snake bit you.’ This she did, and on the girl’s left arm, near the shoulder, was a very large and ugly scar, as if a piece of flesh had sloughed away, and the wound had then skinned over. Fortman then proceeded to tell me how the girl had been bitten, some years before, in Marico, when quite a child, and that a horse had been saddled up at once, and a messenger despatched for De Lange’s snake-stone, how the little girl had become insensible and turned nearly black before the stone arrived, and that it had been twice applied before it drew out the snake-poison. Both De Lange and Fortman described the action of the stone in the same way. Friedrich de Lange told me that he had brought this snake-stone with him from the Cape Colony, and that it had been an heirloom in his family for some generations.” Evidence like this appears to me stronger even than the sneers of doctors, though that, too, should be strong, considering how constantly they have sneered at the truth in whatever new form it presented itself—inoculation, mesmerism, and so forth—anything, in fact, that they did not understand, so that they were never at a loss for material.