I was assured that this was not the case in St.Lucia; that the snake attacks no oftener than other venomous snakes,--that is, when trodden on, or when his retreat is cut off.

At all events, it seems easy enough to kill him: so easy, that I hope yet it may be possible to catch him alive, and that the Zoological Gardens may at last possess--what they have long coveted in vain--hideous attraction of a live Fer-de- lance.

The specimens which we brought home are curious enough, even from this aesthetic point of view.

Why are these poisonous snakes so repulsive in appearance, some of them at least, and that not in proportion to their dangerous properties?
For no one who puts the mere dread out of his mind will call the Cobras ugly, even anything but beautiful; nor, again, the deadly Coral snake of Trinidad, whose beauty tempts children, and even grown people, to play with it, or make a necklace of it, sometimes to their own destruction.

But who will call the Puff Adder of the Cape, or this very Fer-de-lance, anything but ugly and horrible: not only from the brutality signified, to us at least, by the flat triangular head and the heavy jaw, but by the look of malevolence and craft signified, to us at least, by the eye and the lip?
'To us at least,' I say.