CERASTES; 391 



fastened between the man's fore-finger and thumb, 

 so as to bring the blood. The fellow shewed no 

 sign of either pain or fear, and we kept him with 

 us full four hours, without his applying any sort 

 of remedy, or his seeming inclined so to do. To 

 make myself assured that the animal was in its 

 perfect state^ I made the man hold him by the 

 neck, so as to force him to open his mouth, and 

 lacerate the thigh of a pelican, a bird I had tamed, 

 as big as a swan. The bird died in about thirteen 

 minutes, though it was apparently affected in fifty 

 seconds ; and we cannot think this was a fair trial, 

 because, a very few minutes before, it had bit the 

 man, and so discharged part of its virus, and it 

 was made to scratch the pelican by force, without 

 anv irritation or action of its own." 



I apprehend this to be the Aspic, which Cleo- 

 patra employed to procure her death. Alexandria, 

 plentifully supplied by water, must then have had 

 fruit of all kinds in its gardens : the baskets of figs 

 must have come from thence, and the Aspic or 

 Cerastes that was hid in them, from the adjoining 

 desert, where they are plenty to this day ; for to 

 the westward in Egypt, where the Nile overflows, 

 there is no sort of serpents whatever that ever I 

 saw, nor, as I have before said, is there any^ other 

 of the mortal kind that I know, in those parts of 

 Africa adjoining to Egypt, excepting the Cerastes, 

 It should seem very natural for any one, wboi 

 from motives of distress, has resolved to put a pe* 

 riod to his existence, especially women, and weak 

 persons, unaccustomed to handle arms, to seek 



