Note 9 — X.—SERPENTS, DRAGONS, FABULOUS ANIMALS AND MONSTERS.

That snakes contain in their heads certain precious stones is an old belief common to most branches of the human family.9 A story in a native book of anecdotes relates how a foreigner passing a pork-butcher’s shop asks the master what he will take for the bench on which the pork is exposed. The answer, given in fun, is “fifty taels.” The foreigner offers to pay the money. This convinces the butcher that there must be something valuable in the bench, so he declines to sell it, and carefully puts it by. The foreigner leaves the place and returns after a year’s absence. Seeing the butcher he asks after the bench, and, in answer to a very natural enquiry why he deems it so valuable, informs him that, lodged in a cavity within it, is a snake, holding in its mouth a precious gem. He further adds that the snake lives on the blood that soaks through the wood from the raw meat exposed on it, and that when this supply is cut off the snake will die, and the gem become worthless. Cursing his own stupidity, the butcher seizes a hatchet and splits the bench open, finding the snake dead, while the jewel it undoubtedly holds in its mouth is of the same colour as the eye of a dried fish. I have chosen this story as illustrating another point in native folk-lore—the mysterious powers attributed to foreigners—but may observe that constant allusions are to be found in Chinese works to the idea of snakes containing precious stones. Now, to go no further than a file of Indian papers received a few weeks ago, I find in one of them the following paragraph. “The Lawrence Gazette indulges in surmises as to the object of the ex-King of Oudh in collecting snakes. Perhaps,” it says, “he wishes to become possessed of the precious jewel which some serpents are said to contain, or of that species of snake by whose means it is said a person can fly in the air. The jewel referred to (nun) has in all times been a popular myth, but located variously in the heads of toads, fishes, and even horses.” The superstition therefore is not confined to the Chinese. Is it not possible that Shakespere’s allusion to the toad, which,