composed of a number of scales unKed to each other 

 by a transparent membrane, which grows harder as 

 it grows older, until the animal changes, which is 

 generally done twice a year. This cover then bursts 

 near the head, and the serpent creeps from it, by an 

 undulatory motion, in a new skin, much more vivid 

 than the former. If the old slough be then viewed, 

 every scale will be distinctly seen like a piece of 

 net-work. 



There is much geometrical neatness in the dispo. 

 sal of the serpent's scales, for assisting the animal's 

 sinuous motion. As the edges of the foremost scales 

 lie over the ends of the following, so these edges,when 

 the scales are erected, which the animal has a power 

 of doing in a small degree catch in the ground, like 

 the nails in the wheels of a chariot, and so promote 

 and facilitate the animal's progressive motion. The 

 erecting these scales is by means of a multitude of 

 distinct muscles, with which each is supplied, and 

 one end of which is tacked each to the middle of the 

 foregoing. 



Serpents differ very widely as to size. The Ly- 

 boija of Surinam grows to thirty-six feet long. The 

 little serpent at the Cape of Good Hope is not 

 above three inches, and covers whole sandy deserts 

 with its multitudes ! This tribe of animals like that 

 of fishes, seems to have no bounds put to their 

 growth. Their bones are in a great measure car- 

 tilaginous, and they are consequently capable of 

 great extension ; the older therefore a serpent be. 

 comes, the larger it grows ; and as they live to a 

 great age, they arrive at an enormous size. Leguat 

 assures us, that he saw one at Java, that was fifty 

 feet long. 



Vipers are often kept in boxes for six or eight 

 months without any food whatever, and there are 

 Tittle serpents sometimes sent over to Europe, from 

 Grand Cairo, that live for several years in glasses,and 

 never cat at all, nor even stain the glass with their 

 excrements. Thus the serpent tribe unite in them- 



