382 CLASS REPTILIA. 



The name of aspic has been given amongst all civilized 

 nations to a serpent rendered ever memorable by the death of 

 Cleopatra, whose beauty, glory, honours, and deplorable end, 

 have occupied the historians and poets of all times and of all 

 nations. 



It is universally known that this illustrious princess, 

 abandoned by Fortune, who had so long smiled upon her, 

 commanded that a reptile of this species should be brought 

 to her, concealed in fruits and flowers, and caused it to bite 

 her, to put a period to her misfortunes. But after the fall of 

 the Roman empire, though Egypt still preserved some traces 

 of the high renown of Cleopatra, and though the name of 

 the aspic was not pronounced without some degree of horror 

 by all the people of Europe, still for a long series of ages 

 the true species of the serpent was unknown, and the cerastes, 

 the Egyptian viper, the ammodytes, and the lebetina, were 

 taken for it. Bruce declared for the first of these opinions, 

 Forskal for the last, and Lauren ti, Hasselquist, Daudin, 

 and Count Lacepede, for the second, which undoubtedly has 

 some plausibility, for it is well proved that under the name 

 of ao-m?, the ancients were acquainted with many venomous 

 serpents aboriginal of Egypt. 



It has been only since the expedition of the French to 

 Egypt that the true species of the aspic has been ascertained. 

 During the period of that expedition, the French philoso- 

 phers attached to the army observed a species of ophidian, 

 regarded as harmless by Linnaeus and most herpetologists, 

 but considered as extremely venomous by the traveller, 

 Forskal. This ophidian is called haje by the inhabitants, 

 and recent travels have incontestibly proved that it is the 

 true aspic of the ancients which never inhabited Europe; 

 for the reptile which some years since infested the forest of 

 Fontainbleau, and was called by this name, was nothing but 

 a variety of the common viper, and the cesping of the 



