68 Fables and Prejudices regarding Serpents. 



at the Isle of Banka, the Chinese reckon the bile of the great 

 python a precious remedy against many diseases.* I pass over 

 the use made in the middle ages of different parts of the snake, 

 to each of which was attributed salutary qualities ; in our days 

 they are wholly laid aside. 



It is only in recent times that those experiments have been 

 instituted on the effects of the bites of snakes, which we have 

 related elsewhere : the ancients, as many people still do, re- 

 puted indiscriminately all serpents venomous ; they placed the 

 seat of their deadly weapon in the tongue, or in the end of the 

 tail, and ascribed to the bite of each species, according to their 

 fancy, a different train of mischiefs. t Civilization is unable 

 to destroy these errors, and one is astonished to hear them re- 

 peated by well-informed persons ; to see republished in several 

 works the story of the three sons of a colonist, successively 

 dying at long intervals, of a wound caused by tlie fang of a 

 rattlesnake remaining in the boot of their father, who had first 

 died of the bite : a story which the inhabitants of Surinam, 

 as well as those of the United States, are pleased to repeat to 

 strangers passing through their country. One is astonished 

 to hear of sea-snakes of monstrous size ; of boas from forty 

 to fifty feet long that attack men, oxen, tigers, and swallow 

 them whole, after having covered them with a frothy saliva : 

 absurdities that bring to recollection those fables of winged 

 monsters or dragons, of which the mythology of the ancient 

 people of Asia has preserved the remembrance, and of which 

 the wayward fancy of the Chinese has multiplied the forms. 

 What shall we say on reading in modern works of great re- 

 putation, descriptions of the marvellous effects produced on 

 serpents by music ; when travellers of talent tell us they have 

 seen young snakes retreat into the mouth of their mother, 

 every time that they were menaced with danger ! Unfortu- 

 nately naturalists, in classing such fables with the number of 

 facts, have often embellished with them their descriptions, and 

 thus have contributed to give them universal acceptation. 



* Olivier, Lund en Zeetogten, ii. p. 447. 



t See Lucan, Pharsalia, ix. 937 ; Nicander, de heriaca. 



