COBRA CATCHING [To the Editor of ,the SPECTATOR.] SIR, =Durin g
a twenty years' residence in Egypt I saw. Musa perform three times. On the last occasion he caught snakes within the locked confines of Karnak Temple, which puts " salting " quite out of court. Some say he smells the snakes, but my impression is that quickness of eye and sharp- ness of hearing (he goes about beating the bushes with his long stick intoning his charm about Solomon's power over nocuous creatures), combined with a knowledge of their habits, account for his success. As far as I remember, he forked the snake into the air with his stick, and when it fell, pounced ou it with foot and staff and grabbed it behind the head. I. never saw the spitting cobra caught or at any rate spit. Musa's first act was always to make the shake bite his scarf, whereupon he jerked out the fangs.
As far as I observed, lie never allowed the scorpion to try to sting him—the feebleness of its pecks, when it did, was very striking—until he had first grasped it by tail and body, during which act my impression was he hypnotized it or in some way " incapacitated it for business." He always blew on it before allowing it free play. On one occasion he plaCed the creature on a very reluctant boy's hand after making him repeat a long charm. Musa always liberates his captures in the desert ; were he to kill them his powers, he says, would go from him. He inherits them ancestrally from his father.
The Rifai tribe to which he belongs is of Libyan origin : a race famed of old for their power of handling snakes. The proto-historic centre of serpent worship at Buto in the Delta was probably Libyan.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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