,580 AMPHIBIALA. 



of the jerboa ; and I have already said, that I never but once found 

 any animal in the viper's belly, but one jerboa in a gravid female 

 cerastes. 



u I kept two of these last mentioned creatures in a glass jar, 

 such as is used for keeping sweetmeats in, for two years, without 

 having given them any food ; they did not sleep, that I observed, 

 in winter, but cast their skins the last days of April. The ce- 

 rastes moves with great rapidity, and in all directions, forward, 

 backward, and sideways. When he inclines to surprise any one, 

 who is too far from him, he creeps with his side towards the person, 

 and his head averted, till judging his distance, he turns round, 

 springs upon him, and fastens upon the part next to him ; for it is 

 not true what is said, that the cerastes does not leap or spring. I 

 saw one of them at Cairo, in the house of Julian and Rosa, crawl 

 up the side of a box, in which there were many, and there lie still 

 as if hiding himself, till one of the people who brought them to us, 

 came near him, and though in a very disadvantageous posture, 

 sticking, as it were, perpendicular to the side of the box, he leaped 

 near the distance of three feet, and fastened between the man's 

 fore-finger and thumb, so as to bring the blood. The fellow 

 shewed no sign of either pain or fear, and we kept him with us 

 full four hours, without his applying any sort of remedy, or his 

 seeming inclined so to do. To make myself assured that the ani- 

 mal was in its perfect state, I made the man hold him by the neck, 

 so as to force him to open his mouth, and lacerate the thigh of a 

 pelican, a bird I had tamed, as big as a swan. The bird died in 

 about thirteen minutes, though it was apparently affected in fifty 

 seconds ; and we cannot think this was a fair trial, because, a very 

 few minutes before it had bit the man, and so discharged part of 

 its virus ; and it was made to scratch the pelican by force, without 

 any irritation or action of its own. 



" 1 apprehend this to be the aspic, which Cleopatra employed 

 to procure her death. Alexandria, plentifully supplied by water, 

 must then have had fruit of all kinds in its gardens : the basket of 

 figs must have come from thence, and the aspic or cerastes that was 

 hid in them, from the adjoining desert, where they are plenty to 

 this day ; for to the westward in Egypt, where the Nile overflows, 

 there is no sort of serpent3 whatever that I ever saw ; nor, as I 

 have before said, is there any other of the mortal kind that I know. 

 In those parts of Africa adjoining to Egypt, excepting the ce- 



