SERPENT. | NATURAL HISTORY. 283 
laid in a hollow place, subject to receive moisture en- 
gendereth Serpents. 
Topsell, “ History of Serpents,” pp. 595-96. 
[Topsell gives many other curious facts about Serpents, but 
as his treatise covers nearly forty folio pages, this sample must 
suffice. ] 
You have ate a snake, and are grown young, gamesome 
and rampant. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, “'TThe Elder Brothers,” iv. 4. 
He hath left off o’ late to feed on snakes ; 
His beard’s turn’d white again. 
Massinger, etc., “The Old Law,” v. 1. 
Your viper wine 
So much in practice with grey-bearded gallants, 
But vappa to the nectar of her lips. 
Ibid, “Believe as You List,” iv. 1. 
TuHar men may appear to be headless :—Take the slough 
of a snake, and auripigment [arsenic] and Greek pitch, and 
the wax of young bees, and ass’s blood, and pound them 
all, and put them in a rough jar full of water, and make 
it boil on a slow fire, and then let it cool, and make a 
taper of it, and every man who shall be illuminated by 
that taper will seem to be headless. 
Albertus Magnus, ‘Of the Wonders of the World.” 
Ir you wish to kill a Serpent quickly, take as much as 
you please of Aristolochia Rotunda, and pound it well, 
and take a frog of the woods or of the fields, and pound 
and mix it with the Aristolochia, and put with it something 
burnt, and write with it on a paper, or anything that you 
prefer, and throw it to the Serpents. Taee 
_Tuat a house may seem quite green and full of Serpents 
and fearful images, take the skin of a Serpent, and the 
blood of another male Serpent, and the fat of another 
Serpent, collect all these three things, and put them in a 
cere-cloth, and kindle it in a new lamp. Ibid. 
