XVII 

 THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 



PREAMBLE 



AMONG the thousand and one projects I have 

 entertained at various times was one for a work 

 on snakes, with the good though somewhat 

 ambitious title of "The Book of the Serpent." 

 This was not to be the work of one who must 

 write a book about something, but a work on a 

 subject which had long had a peculiar fascination 

 for the author, which for years had cried to be 

 written, and finally had to be written. 



As it was a work requiring a great deal of 

 research, it would take a long time to write, long 

 years, in fact, since it would have to be done at 

 odd times, when hours or days or weeks could be 

 spared from the hard business of manufacturing 

 mere bread-and-cheese books. Collecting material 

 would have to be a slow process, involving the 

 perusal or consultation of a thousand volumes, 

 and probably ten thousand periodicals and annals 

 and proceedings and journals of many natural 

 history societies, great and small, of many countries. 

 And all this research, with the classification and 



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