COMMON VIPER. 



And now with fiercer heat the desert glows, 

 And mid-day gleamings aggravate their woes : 

 When lo ! a spring amid the sandy plain 

 Shews its clear mouth to cheer the fainting train. 

 But round the guarded brink in thick array 

 Dire aspics roll'd their congregated way ; 

 And thirsting in the midst the torrid Dipsas lay. 

 Blank horror seiz'd their veins ; and at the view 

 Back from the fount the troops recoiling flew: 

 When, wise above the crowd, by cares unquell'd, 

 Their awful leader thus their dread dispell'd : 

 Let not vain terrors thus your minds enslave ; 

 Nor dream the serpent brood can taint the wave: 

 Urg'd by the fatal fang their poison kills; 

 But mixes harmless with the bubbling rills. 

 Dauntless he spoke, and bending as he stood, 

 Drank with cool courage the suspected flood. 



" The symptoms, " say s Dr. Mead, "which follow 

 the bite of a Viper, when it fastens either one or 

 both its greater teeth in any part of the body, are 

 an acute pain in the place wounded, with a swell- 

 ing, at first red, but afterwards livid, which by 

 degrees spreads farther to the neighbouring parts ; 

 with great faintness, and a quick, though low, 

 and sometimes interrupted, pulse ; great sickness 

 at the stomach, with bilious, convulsive vomit- 

 ings, cold sweats, and sometimes pain about the 

 navel ; and if the cure be not speedy, death itself, 

 unless the strength of nature prove sufficient to 

 overcome these disorders : and though it does, the 

 swelling still continues inflamed for some time ; 

 nay, in some cases, more considerably upon the 

 abating of the other symptoms than at the begin- 

 ning; and often from the small wound runs a, 



