VOL. XLVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. (557 



them, which he had from a father missionary in the East Indies, viz. " that they 

 were not taken out of a serpent's head, but made of the bones of the small 

 buffalo in the Indies;" by which their coaches are drawn instead of horses; the 

 bones being half calcined or charred by the dung of the same buffalo. He gave 

 Sir H. several pieces, with some of the snake or serpent-stones made out of 

 them, and which he had in his collection, of several shapes and colours. 



Sir H. thinks the first who gave any account of them, was Francesco Redi at 

 Florence, who had them from the Duke of Tuscany's collections, and who, in 

 his Esperienze Nat. mentions great virtues of them, related by 3 Franciscan 

 friars, who came from the East Indies in 1 662 ; which were, that being applied 

 to the bites of the viper, asp, or any other venomous animals, it sticks very fast 

 till it has imbibed or attracted all the poison, as a loadstone does iron, as many 

 people in the Indies believe, and then it falls off of itself; and being put into 

 new milk, it parts with the poison, and gives the milk a bluish colour; of which 

 Redi tells the success of those he figured. 



Kempfer, in his Amoenitat. Exot. p. 396, speaking of this, says, it helps those 

 bitten by vipers, outwardly applied; and that it is not found in the serpent's head, 

 as believed, but by a secret art made by the Brahmans; and that, for the right 

 and happy application of it, there must be two ready; that when one has fallen 

 off filled with the poison, the other may supply its place. They are commonly, 

 as he says, kept in a box with cotton, to be ready on occasion. 



Biron says, that if the wound of the sei-pent has not bled, it must be a little 

 pricked, so as the blood comes out, and then to be applied as usual. It comes 

 from the kingdom of Camboya. 



Fig. ], pi. 12, is a coin of Domitian in small brass, having on the foreside, 

 the figure of a rhinoceros with 2 horns growing out of his nose, the one above 

 the other; which in the Numismata Pembrokiana, part 1, tab. xvi, n. 68, the 

 engraver has made like a tusk or dens exertus of a boar, and in part 3, tab. 39, 

 he has made the 2 horns on his nose like 2 tusks, and has likewise given him 2 

 horns close to his ears; so that he has made him a creature with 4 horns; and 

 therefore it was thought proper to give an accurate copy of the medal, in order 

 to clear up that famous passage of Martial, Lib. de Spectac. N° 22, 

 Namque gravem gemino cornu sic extulit ursum, 

 Jactat ut impositas taurus in astra pilas. 

 Which has for many ages puzzled the critics, all thinking that the rhinoceros 

 was a real unicorn, or animal which never had any more than one horn. See 

 these Trans. N" 470, and beside the double horns, or geminum cornu, in Sir 

 Hans Sloane's museum, it is said Dr. Mead had another geminum cornu like- 

 wise from Africa. 



Fig. 2 is the reverse of the same medal, with this inscription imp domit avg 



VOL. IX. 4 P 



