CERASTES. 
99 
at Cairo, in the house of Julian and Rosa, crawl up 
the side of a box, in which there were many, and 
there lie still as if hiding himself, till one of the 
people who brought them to us came near him, and 
though in a very disadvantageous posture, sticking, 
as it were, perpendicular to the side of the box, he 
leaped near the distance of three feet, and fastened 
between the man’s fore finger and thumb, so as to 
bring the blood. The fellow showed 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 few minutes 
before, it had bitten the man, and so discharged 
part of its virus; and it was made to scratch the 
pelican by force, without any irritation or action 
of its own.” 
The inhabitants of the East will handle venom- 
ous reptiles with a freedom which an European will 
hardly credit upon mere report : yet we have been 
assured, from the most respectable authority, that 
for the sake of a sorry livelihood the Hindoos carry 
them about in baskets to show the idle multitude, 
and make them gradually uncoil themselves to the 
