Snakes in Nature. 39 



Following up her "whipsnake and jaguar" with another 

 impossible association, Eliza Cook has " the boa and the 

 vulture" consorting together for the Red Man's ruin. 



The boa-constrictor is often alluded to, but mentioned by 

 name only once again, unless I am mistaken, and then by 

 Byron in Don Juan : 



" Not that he was not sometimes rash or so, 

 But never in his real and serious mood ; 

 Then calm, concentrated, and still, and slow, 

 He lay coil'd like the boa in the wood : 

 With him it never was a word a blow ; 

 His angry word once o'er, he shed no blood ; 

 But in his silence there was much to rue, 

 And his one blow left little work for two." 



Asps, of course, have filled, ever since " the pretty worm 

 of Nilus" hidden in fig-leaves was carried up by country 

 clowns (momentous burden) into the palace of Cleopatra 

 herself Mark Antony's " serpent of old Nile " a large space 

 in serpent-lore. But they are not found often in English 

 verse. In his " Camel-driver," Collins appropriately places it 

 (the " parch'd adder " of Akenside) in Arabian deserts : 



"At that dread hour the silent asp shall creep, 

 If aught of rest I find, upon my sleep." 



And perhaps in the next couplet he refers to the asp's 

 natural companion in the sandy wilderness, the puff-adder : 



"Or some swol'n serpent twist his scales around 

 And wake to anguish with a burning wound." 



That this little worm lets itself be eaten by cranes in order 

 to feed at its ease upon the bird's entrails l is a curious fiction 

 more than once alluded to in metaphor, and now and again 

 the word "asp" occurs as a generic name for venomous 

 snakes rather than of any specific viper. The "desert 

 serpent" of Campbell that dwells in "desolation cold," 



1 " As through the crane's trunk throat doth speed, 

 The asp who doth on his feeder feed." Lovelace, 



