ZOOLOGY. 347 



D. D., published in 1742, the author, treating of the food of these rep- 

 tiles, writes, " That dust was not the original food of the serpent 

 seems evident from the Paradisiac serpent, but the necessary conse- 

 quence of the change made in the manner of its motion, i. e. the 

 prone posture of its body, by which it is doomed to live upon food in- 

 termixed with earth." Adam Clark, commenting more recently upon 

 the record in its literal sense, seeks to elude the difficulties which 

 thence arise, by contending that the Hebrew, " nachash," may be 

 translated "ape," as well as "serpent." But we find him reduced 

 to the necessity of glossing the text by such expositions, as that to go 

 on the belly means " on all fours" ; and by affirming, of the arboreal 

 frugiverous four-handed monkeys, that " they are obliged to gather their 

 food from the ground," we have a lively instance of the straits to which 

 the commentator is reduced who attempts to penetrate deeper than the 

 Word warrants into the nature of that mysterious beginning of crime 

 and punishment, by the dim light of an imperfect and secondhand 

 knowledge of the Divine works. If, indeed, the laws of animated na- 

 ture formed part of the preliminary studies of the theologist, the futil- 

 ity of such attempts to expound the third chapter of Genesis, viewed 

 as a simple narration of facts, would be better appreciated by him ; and 

 if he should still be prompted to append his thoughts, as so many 

 lamps by the side of the sacred text, he would most probably restrict 

 himself to the attempt to elucidate its symbolical signification. 



What geology and anatomy have unfolded of the nature of serpents, 

 in regard to their present condition, amounts to this ; that their parts 

 are as exquisitely adjusted to the form of their whole, and to their 

 habits and sphere of life, as is the organization of any animal which 

 we call superior to them. It is true the serpent has no limbs, yet it 

 can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the jerboa, and, 

 suddenly loosing the close coils of its crouching spiral, it can spring 

 into the air and seize the bird upon the wing ; thus all these creatures 

 fall its prey. The serpent has neither hands or talons, yet it can out- 

 wrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger in its folds. Far from licking 

 up its food as it glides along, the serpent lifts up its crushed prey, 

 and presents it, grasped in the death-coil as in the hand, to the gaping, 

 slime-dropping mouth. It is truly wonderful to see the work of hands, 

 feet, fins, performed by a simple modification of the vertebral column in 

 a multiplication of its joints, with mobility of its ribs. As serpents 

 move chiefly on the surface of the earth, their danger is greatest from 

 pressure or blows from above ; all the joints are accordingly fashioned 

 to resist yielding, and to sustain pressure in a vertical direction ; theie 

 is no natural undulation of the body upwards and downwards, it is per- 

 mitted only from side to side. So closely and compactly do the ten 

 pairs of joints between each side of the two or three hundred verte- 

 bras fit together, that even in a relaxed and dead state the body can- 

 not be twisted, except in a series of side coils. Of this the reader may 

 assure himself by an experiment on a dead and supple snake. Let 

 him lay it straight along a level surface ; seize the end of the tail, and, 

 by a movement of rotation between the thumb and finger, endeavour 

 to screw the snake into spiral coils ; before he can produce a single 



