102 
ON THE PHYSIOONOMy OF SERPENTS. 
even of the animals which are noxious, for procuring the 
means of preservation from the evils which they cause : 
hence the practice, established from the most remote times, 
of extracting from serpents remedies against their bites ; 
while, on the other hand, man sought to appease their fury 
by revering them as divinities. The ancients, employing 
often the most prominent characteristics of animals in their 
allegories, discovered in the habits of serpents, in their qua- 
lities, or even in their form, an inexhaustible fund for set- 
ting to work their own fertile imagination, which heated 
itself invariably in embellishing the observations they had 
made from nature. It is to these various causes, and to 
circumstances perhaps little known at this time, that we 
should attribute the fear, mingled with hatred and venera- 
tion, with which the serpent has inspired the human race. 
In the mythology of most ancient nations, there are traces 
which attest that the idea of the serpent as the evil principle 
prevailed from the most remote antiquity. The serpent is 
represented as the cause of the first transgression and fall 
of man ; and Arimanes, assuming the form of a serpent, 
seeks in vain to overcome his antagonist Orosmandes, who 
represents the good principle in the idealism of the ancient 
Persians. 
It is believed that the ancient Greeks made choice of 
the allegory of the great serpent killed by the arrows of 
Apollo to represent the pestilential vapours, emanating from 
the marshy slime which covered the earth after the deluge, 
or after annual inundations, and which could only be dissi- 
pated by the rays of the sun ; afterwards, this Python be- 
came the attribute of Apollo and his priestesses at Delphi, 
and it subsequently served for the emblem of Foretelling and 
Divination. Analogous circumstances probably gave rise 
to the fable of the Lernaean Hydra, exterminated by the la- 
bours of Hercules and his companion lolas. Among the 
ancient Egyptians, the serpent was the symbol of Fertility. 
They represented under the form of a serpent, inclosed by 
a circle, or entwined around a globe, the Cneph of their 
cosmogony, who is the same as Ammon, or the Agathode- 
mon, the spirit or soul of creation, the principle of all that 
