174 SNAKES. 



ships' Feet, having nothing to recommend them but Truth, 

 a Gift which every Author may be Master of If he will.' 



With ever so praiseworthy an intention of telling 'the 

 Truth,' Lawson did not possess the scientific knowledge to 

 enable him to guard against error. Neither did Colonel 

 Beverley, who wrote a History of Virginia, published in 

 London in 1722, and who perpetuated the 'stinging tail.' 

 ' There Is likewise a Horn Snake, so called from a Sharp Horn 

 it carries in Its Tail, with which it assaults anything that 

 offends It, with that Force that, as It Is said, it will strike its 

 Tail into the Butt End of a Musket, from whence it Is not 

 able to disenq;a2re itself.' 



A few years later, Catesby went over the same ground 

 as a professed naturalist, and afforded a more rational 

 account of this ' horn snake,' to which he assigned the name 

 of Vipera aquatica, 'Water viper,' or 'Water rattlesnake.' 

 ' Not that it hath a Rattle. The Tail of this Viper is small 

 towards the End, and terminates in a blunt, horny Point, 

 about half an Inch long. This harmless little Thing has 

 given a dreadful Character to its Owner, imposing a Belief on 

 the Credulous that he is the terrible Horn Snake armed with 

 Death at both Ends, thus attributing to him another Instru- 

 ment of Death besides that he had before, though in reality 

 of equal Truth with that of the Two-headed Amphlsbasna. 

 Yet we are told that this fatal Horn, by a Jerk of the 

 Tail, not only mortally wounds Men and other Animals 

 but if by Chance struck into a young Tree, whose Bark is 

 more easily penetrated than an old one, the Tree Instantly 

 withers, and turns black and dies ' ^ 



^ The Natural History of Carolina, by Mark Catesby. London, 1731. 



