110 
01^" THE PHYSIOGNOMY OP SERPENTS. 
skill in curing the bites of snakes, and securing them«» 
selves against them. Another people inhabiting Italy, but 
less known, were the Marsi we know still less of the 
Ophigenoi, whose country was Greece.f 
Among the more civilized people of Europe, persons 
who pretend to possess the art of fascinating serpents, are 
very rarely to be met : they consist most frequently of igno« 
rant charlatans, who impose on the lower orders, seeking to 
alarm them by playing familiarly with serpents, while they 
are only thus familiar with the innocuous. M. Lenz has 
given in his workj the history and tragic end of one of 
those pretended conjurors, who paid with his life for a 
temerity, founded on absolute ignorance of the nature of 
vipers. 
HISTORY OP OPHIOLOGY. 
In tracing, in the following pages, a succinct history of 
Ophiology, we shall confine ourselves to a notice of the 
principal authors who have more particularly contributed 
to the progress of this branch of natural history, consider- 
ed as a science. 
The first indications of this nature are to be found in 
the pages of Aristotle : it appears from his observa- 
tions, that this great man made very exact researches on 
the nature and anatomy of snakes ;§ but, unfortunately, 
his work is disfigured by many prejudices, fashionable in 
his day, which he repeats with perfect good faith : this 
author does not enumerate the species, and speaks but 
vaguely of the aspic, of the viper, and of serpents in ge- 
neral. 
The great compilation of Pliny is more rich in curious 
but erroneous statements, than the work of the Greek philo- 
sopher of which we have spoken : he omits most of the ana- 
tomical details given by Aristotle, but he makes men- 
tion of the principal species known at that time, and 
* Virgil, En, vii. 750 ; Silius Italicus, viii. 495. 
t Plikius, vii. 2 ; JElian, xii. 39. 
i Page 192. 
g ii. 12 ; iv. 11 ; v. 3 ; v. 28 ; viii. 17 and 19, &c. 
