XVII 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 
PREAMBLE 
Amone the thousand and one projects I have 
entertained at various times was one for a work 
on snakes, with the good though somewhat 
ambitious title of “The Book of the Serpent.” 
This was not to be the work of one who must 
write a book about something, but a work on a 
subject which had long had a peculiar fascination 
for the author, which for years had cried to be 
written, and finally had to be written. 
As it was a work requiring a great deal of 
research, it would take a long time to write, long 
years, in fact, since it would have to be done at 
odd times, when hours or days or weeks could be 
spared from the hard business of manufacturing 
mere bread-and-cheese books. Collecting material 
would have to be a slow process, involving the 
perusal or consultation of a thousand volumes, 
and probably ten thousand periodicals and annals 
and proceedings and journals of many natural 
history societies, great and small, of many countries. 
And all this research, with the classification and 
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