188 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



thidre. I know not whether the ancient Arabs, of whom Mr. Micha- 

 e'lis speaks in his 83d question, saw any other flying serpents.' 

 Niebuhr refers also to Lord Anson's report of flying serpentsMn th 

 island of Quibo. The passage is as follows : * The Spaniards, too, 

 informed us, that there was often found in the woods, a most mis- 

 chievous serpent, called the flying snake, which, they said, darted 

 itself from the boughs of trees on either man or beast that came 

 within its reach, and whose sting they believed to be inevitable 

 death. But professor Paxton has proposed an interpretation of the 

 original phrase, which the text will equally bear. The verb ouph, 

 he remarks, sometimes means to sparkle, to emit coruscations of 

 light. In? this sense the noun thopah, frequently occurs in the sa- 

 cred volume. Thus, Zophar (Job xi. 17) says : * The coruscation 

 (thopah) shall be as the morning.' The word in the texts undjer 

 'consideration, may therefore refer to "[the ruddy color of that ser- 

 pent, and express the sparkling of the blazing sunbeam upon its 

 scales, which are extremely brilliant. It seems therefore probable, 

 that the seravh was not the hydrus or chersydrus, as Bochart sup- 

 poses, but othe prsester or dipsas kind. 



