190 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



have a kind of beard hanging from their lower jaw ; their aspect is 

 frightful, their cry loud and shrill, their crest bright yellow, and 

 they have a protuberance on their heads, of the color of a burning 

 coal. 2. Those of the flat country are of a silver color, and fre- 

 quent rivers, to which the former never come. 3. Those of the 

 marshes are black, glow, and have no crest. Their bite is not ven- 

 omous, though the creatures are dreadful. 



The following description of the Boa is chiefly abstracted and 

 translated from DE LA CEPEDE, by Mr. Taylor, who considers it to 

 be the proper dragon. 



The BOA is among serpents, what the lion or the elephant is 

 among quadrupeds. He usually reaches twenty feet in length ; and 

 to this species we must refer those described by travellers, as 

 lengthened to forty or fifty feet, as related by Owen. Kircher men- 

 tions a serpent forty palms in length ; and such a serpent is referred^ 

 to by Job Ludolph, as extant in Ethiopia. Jerom, in his life of 

 Hilarion, denominates such a serpent, draco, a dragon ; saying, that 

 they were called boas, because they could swallow (bovis) beeves, 

 and waste whole provinces. Bosnian says, ( entire men have fre- 

 quently been found in the gullets of serpents, on the gold coast ; 

 but, the longest serpent I have read of, is that mentioned by Livy, 

 and by Pliny, which opposed the Roman army under Regulus, at 

 the river Bagrada, in Africa. It devoured several of the soldiers ; 

 an4 so hard were its scales, that they resisted darts and spears : at 

 length it was, as it were, besieged, and the military engines were 

 employed against it, as against a fortified city. It was a hundred 

 and twenty feet in length.' 



At Batavia a serpent was taken which had swallowed an entire 

 stag of a large size ; and one taken at Bunda had, in like manner, 

 swallowed a negro woman. Leguat, in his travels, says, there are 

 serpents fifty feet long in the island of Java. At Batavia they still 

 keep the skin of one, which, though but twenty feet in length, is 

 said to have swallowed a young maid whole. From this account 

 of the Boa, Mr. Taylor thinks it probable that John had it in his 

 mind, when he describes a persecuting power under the symbol of 

 a great red dragon. The dragon of antiquity was a serpent of pro- 

 digious size, and its most conspicuous color was red ; and the apo- 

 calyptic dragon strikes vehemently with his tail; in all which par- 

 ticulars it perfectly agrees with the boa. 



' And there appeared another wonder in heaven ; and behold a 

 great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven 

 crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the 

 stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth,' Rev. xii. 3, 4 ; 15 

 17. The, number of heads here given to this creature, are cer- 

 tainly allegorical ; as are also the ten horns, and the ten crowns 

 which are attached to them. But in all these instances, says Pax- 

 ton, it is presumed that the inspired writer alludes either to histori- 

 cal facts ; or natural appearances. It is well known, that there is a 

 species of snake, called amphisbena3, or double-headed, although 



