318 CLASS REPTlLIxi. 



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 roU'd their congregated way. 

 And thirsting in the midst the torrid Dipsas lay. 

 Blank horror seized their viens, 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." 



Very frequent occasions do not occur of observing the 

 effects of the bite of serpents upon man. The terror which 

 these reptiles inspire causes them to be too carefully avoided 

 to allow of the multiplication of accidents of this kind. Never- 

 theless, there are few physicians, even in Europe, who have 

 not been witnesses of the consequences of the bite of the 

 viper. Sir Everard Home, in the Philosophical Transac- 

 tions for 1810, relates an example of the fatal effects of the 

 bite of a rattle-snake, a case, which he had himself the 

 opportunity of studying and examining. Another very 

 recent and deplorable instance of the same is too well known 

 to render any more than a mere allusion to it necessary. 

 We mean that which occurred at Rouen to an Englishman, 

 in February 1827, and which terminated fatally within eight 

 hours after the bite of the rattle-snake. 



The morbid symptoms which follow the venomous inocu- 

 lation, made by the tooth of the ophidians, of which we are 

 speaking, are developed with excessive rapidity. In many 

 animals, according to Fontana, the effects become already 

 perceptible after fifteen or twenty seconds. In man they 



