called it my fiery dragon which guarded my ale cellar.  At length I caught it, coiled up on one of the steps.  I put it again into an American flour barrel; but it happened not to be the same as he had been in, and I observed a nail protruding through the staves about half way up.  This, I suppose, he had made use of to help his escape; for he was missing one morning about ten o’clock:  I had seen him at nine o’clock; so I thought he could not be far off.  I looked about for him for half an hour, when I gave up the hunt in despair.  However, at one o’clock, as the men were going from dinner, one of them observed the rogue hiding himself under a stone, fifty yards from the house.  ‘Dang my buttons,’ said he, ’if here is not master’s snake.  He came back and told my wife, who told him to go and kill it.  It happened to be washing-day:  the washerwoman gave him a pailful of scalding soapsuds to throw on it; but whether he was most afraid of me or of the snake is still a question:  however, the washerwoman brought it home with the tongs, and dropped it into the dolly-tub.  It dashed round the tub with the velocity of lightning; my daughter, seeing its agony, snatched it out of the scalding liquid, but too late:  it died in a few minutes.  I was not at all angry with my wife:  I had had my whim, and she had had hers.  I had got all the knowledge I wanted to get; I had learned that it was of no use for a human being, who requires food three times a day, to domesticate an animal which can live weeks and months without food:  for, as the saying is, ‘Hunger will tame any thing;’ and without hunger you can tame nothing.  I have also learned that the serpent, instead of being the emblem of wisdom, should have been an emblem of stupidity.”

“The stench emitted by the common snake, when molested, is superlatively noisome; and is given off so powerfully and copiously, that it infects the air around to a diameter of several yards.  This I witnessed on observing a bitch dog kill a rather large snake; in which act two points beside the odour effused were notable.  The coils of the snake formed, as it were, a circular wall; and in the circular space between it, the snake sunk its head, as if for protection.  The dog’s efforts were to catch and crush the head; and, shrivelling up her fleshy lips, ‘which all the while ran froth,’ she kept thrusting the points of her jaws into the circular pit aforesaid, and catching at and fracturing the head.  During the progress of these acts, she, every few seconds, snorted, and shook off the froth, of which she seemed sedulously careful to free herself, and barked at the conquered snake.  The dog was a most determined vermin-killer, and in rats, &c., quite an accomplished one; but snakes did not often come in her way.”—­J.D.

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CURIOUS FACTS IN VEGETATION

(From Part xiv. of Knowledge for the People, or the Plain Why and Because.)