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Fables and prejudices regarding Serpents, By Dr H. 



SCHLEGEL.* 



The serpent performed a grand part in antiquity, and still 

 plays it among most barbarous or demi-civilized nations. Nu- 

 merous causes have been assigned for this phenomenon. Man, 

 intimidated by his aversion for these animals, which is in him 

 in some degree innate, has only learnt from experience, how 

 small a number of these reptiles are formidable by their poison- 

 ous qualities, while others conceal, under the same delusive 

 appearances, a mild and inoffensive character. 



A thousand different properties, which are successively de- 

 tected in serpents, have opened to man a vast field of medita- 

 tion, and, in furnishing ample materials to dress out his religious 

 ideas, have presented him with an infinite number of mythic 

 allegories. He has drawn from them symbols, and has ended 

 in offering to those dreaded animals a worship founded on 

 the most diverse and conflicting motives. It would seem to 

 be natural to man to avail himself even of the animals which 

 are noxious, for procuring the means of preservation from the 

 evils which they cause : hence the practice, established from 

 the most remote times, of extracting from serpents remedies 

 against their bites ; while, on the other hand, man sought 

 to appease their fury by revering them as divinities. The 

 ancients, employing often the most prominent characteristics of 

 animals in their allegories, discovered, in the habits of ser- 

 pents, in their qualities, or even in their form, an inexhaus- 

 tible fund for setting to work their own fertile imagination, 

 which heated itself invariably in embellishing the observations 

 they had made from nature. It is to these various causes, and 

 to circumstances perhaps little known at this time, that we 

 should attribute the fear, mingled with hatred and venera- 

 tion, with which the serpent has inspired the human race. 



In the mythology of most ancient nations, there are traces 



* From Dr Traill's excellent translation of Dr Schlegel's valuable " Essay on 

 the Physiognomy of Serpents," about to be published. This work we recom- 

 mend to the student of Ophiology. 



