LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURAT 1ST. 



71 



to the intruder ! Its inactivity is thrown off, anc 

 its movements brisk. When once it seizes the 

 offender, it retains its hold with great obstinacy, 

 requiring considerable force to detach it. After 

 a naia has inflicted a wound it makes haste to 

 escape, but the cerastes and other vipers, even 

 <vhen detached by force and thrown upon the 

 ground, remain on the spot, or retreat very slowly 

 from it. 



But what is the use of the horns ? 



Old authors state that it lies buried in the sand, 

 with the tips of the horns just projecting above 

 the surface, as a bait for the birds, somewhat 

 after the manner of the anglers among fishes 

 These last lie concealed in the mud or sand, leav- 

 jng the long fibres that spring from the anterior 

 part of the head out to attract the smaller fry, 

 which they then devour. The birds, they say 

 take the tips of the serpent's horns for little worms 

 or grubs, approach for the purpose of feeding on 

 them, and fall a prey to the serpent. 



We find the latent and subtle habits of the ce- 

 rastes alluded to in the forty-ninth chapter of Gen- 

 esis, containing Jacob's prophecy relative to his 

 offspring. 



Dan shall bee a serpent by the way, an adder by 

 the path, biting the horse heeles, so that his rider 

 shall fall backward.* 



The patriarch, by this comparison with the art- 

 ful cerastes, intimates that the Danites should have 

 their revenge upon their enemies, and extend their 

 conquests more by stratagem than open bravery. 



Nicander also refers to this habit of lying hid 

 in the sands, or in a wheel-track, and biting the 

 horses or cattle that pass near or over it. 



This African speciesf has the character of be- 

 ing able to abstain from water longer than almost 

 any other serpent. Indolently nestled in the arid 

 sand, long periods elapse between the falling of 

 the rain upon its abode. The old French quatrain, 

 printed under the Portrait de la Ceraste, alludes to 

 this abstinence : 



Ceste ceraste a comme deux cornettes 

 Dessus les yeux, et se passe de boire 

 Plus que serpent, qu'il est possible croire. 

 Rempliz sont de poison telles bestes.t 



Both the naia and the cerastes have been named 

 as the asp which saved Cleopatra from the degra- 

 dation of a Roman triumph ; but there can be lit- 

 tle doubt that the cerastes was the " poor venom- 

 ous fool" to which the Egyptian queen appealed 

 " to be angry and dispatch." Some, indeed, de- 

 clare that she did not apply the asp at all, but 

 inoculated herself with the poison by means of a 

 needle ; and Galen relates from other authors, that 

 she killed herself by pouring the venom of an asp 

 into a wound made in her arm by her own teeth. 

 It seems, at first, to be a strange ^dispensation 

 that creatures should be sent on earth armed with 

 venom, 



* Barker's Bible, Gen. xlix. 17. 



t It is found in the south as well as in the north of Africa. 



t fortraits d'Oyseaux, Serpens, fyc. 1577. 



Whose effect 



Holds such an enmity with blood of man, 

 That swift as quicksilver it courses through 

 The natural gates and alleys of the body ; 



but if serpents were to be created as part of the 

 system of the universe and the links in the ani- 

 mal chain would be largely imperfect if such forms 

 did not exist it becomes a necessity that some of 

 the race should be so armed, in order to their tak- 

 ing their prey, and for their self-preservation 

 when attacked. 



Still, when one reads the catalogue of serpents 

 which Cato and his army encountered in the 

 Libyan deserts, where the poet* makes every bite 

 of every serpent followed by the death of a man, 

 the visitation is startling. And really this black 

 list, from which it would seem that the cerastes 

 and the other deadly snakes were leagued with 

 Caesar, (though it may be rather superfluous in 

 specific description, and the different ages and 

 states of one serpent may have been multiplied 

 into many distinct species,) should not be looked 

 on as a mere poetical fiction ; for it was evidently 

 drawn from nature, though somewhat highly-col- 

 ored. 



Many hundred years after the Pharsatia was 

 written, Paul Herman had in his museum at 

 Leyden, preserved in alcohol, and duly labelled 

 and catalogued, one venomous serpent whose bite 

 induced a deadly sleep, another which killed by an 

 unquenchable thirst, a third whose injected poison 

 was immediately followed by hemorrhages from 

 all the pores of the body so that the doomed 

 patient presented the appearance of that king in 

 his dying hours who had revelled in the horrors 

 of the St. Bartholomew and so on. 



Dr. Mead truly lays it down that, in all acci- 

 dents of this nature, the mischief does not stop at 

 the part affected, but is carried further, even 

 through the whole body. In the learned and ob- 

 servant doctor's time the nature of the absorbent 

 system was not so well known as it is in ours, 

 though there is a great deal still to learn. 



Dr. Mead was of opinion that this universal 

 communication was effected by the great activity 

 of the nervous fluid, one part of which being in- 

 fected immediately tainted all the rest. Thus, 

 according to his theory, the whole system of 

 nervous expansions is drawn into spasms and con- 

 vulsions ; and, according to the different nature of 

 the parts to which they belong, different symptoms 

 are produced. In the stomach and intestines these 

 spasms cause sickness, vomitings, and gripes ; in 

 the brain, deliria, sleepiness, and epileptic fits ; 

 in the heart, intermissions of the arterial pulse, 

 palpitations, and swoonings ; in the lungs, diffi- 

 culty of breathing, with strangling and suffoca- 

 tions j in the liver, by the spasmodic contraction 

 of the biliary ducts, the bile is returned into the 

 blood, and makes a jaundice ; in the kidneys the 

 same disposition of the urinary canals interrupts 

 the secretion of the urine, and makes it quite 

 irregular. In short, as he says, the animal econo- 



* Lucan. 



