SERPENT CHARMING, 255

mere sound of the voice, the whistling and clucking, that is
the effective part of the process.

Music is also much used, such as flutes, pipes, whistles,
and drums, to lure the serpents from their retreats, and,
when tamed, to induce them to dance, and perform move-
ments regulated by its sound. It is not very difficult to
-believe that these creatures may be influenced by music, as
well as many other animals, or that its proper regulation
may have been rendered effectual by men who, for succes-
sive generations, have given the subject their attention. Sir
William Jones enumerates, in the ‘ Asiatic Researches,’
many instances of the effect of music on animals, and adds,
“A learned native of India told me that he had frequently
seen the most venomous and malignant snakes leave their
holes on hearing notes from a flute, which, as he supposed,
gave them peculiar delight.”

There are, in spite of their pretensions, no well-authen-
ticated proofs of the insensibility of these men to the poison
of serpents; though they frequently allow themselves to be
bitten, yet it is confessedly only by those snakes which have
been deprived, wholly or in part, of their venomous powers
by the extraction of the fangs: those in the natural state,
which they certainly do handle at times very fearlessly, are