60 Fables and Prejudices regarding Serpents. 



what several modern authors have repeated in their works, 

 that hogs kill snakes to feed upon them, and that serpents find 

 in milk a great dainty ; errors which date from the times of 

 Aristotle* and Pliny.t but propagated in Europe, in America, 

 and other parts of the world. We read in the same authors,^ 

 that the ichneumon, to defend itself against the bites of snakes, 

 bedaubs itself with mud, and that it eats a certain herb which 

 those reptiles hold in aversion. This prejudice, which rests 

 on the simple fact that the little mammiferae we speak of, as 

 well as many others, are the natural enemies of serpents, is 

 preserved in various parts of the East Indies. The plant 

 which possesses the virtue of repelling snakes, according to 

 Kaemfer,§ is the Ophiorhiza Mungos, according to others, the 

 Aristolochia indica, which the jugglers of those countries pre- 

 tend to use with success ; but the experiments of Russell [| 

 have demonstrated that all these qualities repose only on po- 

 pular prejudices. The same holds good with regard to the 

 employment of the Polygala Senega^^ a plant celebrated among 

 many tribes of North America ; while other nations reject it, 

 to make use of plants of the genera Frenanthes^ Lactuca, 

 Helianthus, Spiraea^ &c., the efficacy of which, as antidotes 

 against the poison, are as little proved as that of the former. 

 Modern travellers of great name have furnished some curious 

 factsrelating to a plant,** to which the inhabitants of Colombia 

 attribute the same qualities as those ascribed to the Aristo- 

 lochia in India ; but it is much to be desired that these experi- 

 ments were repeated by persons familiar with the nature of 

 serpents. tt It will be superfluous to repeat all that the ancients 

 have invented concerning the innumerable antidotes of which 



* Hist. Anim., ix. 2. t Hist. Natur. viii. 14. 



X Aristotelis, ix. 7. Plin., viii. 36. 



§ Amcenitates Exoticse, i. p. 305. 



]| Indian Serpents, i. p. 86. 



If Palisot Bauvais, Ap. Latreille, iii. p. 90. 



** Plantae Equinox, ii. pi. 105. 



Tt [The author perhaps is not aware of the curious experiments on the rattle- 

 snake with the leaves of the Fraxinus Americana, by Judge Woodruffe, published 

 in Silliman's Journal for 1833.— Jr.] 



