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The Animal-Lore of ShaJcspeare’s Time . 
“ This is the snake that Cleopatra used, 
The Egyptian queene helov’d of Anthony, 
That with her breasts deare blond was nourished, 
Making her die (faire soule) most patiently. 
Rather than Csesar’s great victorious hand, 
Should triumph ore the queene of such a land.” 
(Chester, Love’s Martyr , p. 114.) 
“ The pretty worm of Nilus,” the supposed cause of 
Cleopatra’s death, is thought by modern writers to have 
been the horned snake ( Vipera cerastes). This serpent, 
.according to Dr. Wright, was well known to the ancients, 
and is found abundantly in Egypt. 
Shakspeare is not inclined to trust the harmlessness 
Snake comnion English Snake. Perhaps in 
some passages he may have the credit of re¬ 
ferring to a foreign species. Macbeth exclaims :— 
“ We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it: 
She’ll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice 
Remains in danger of her former tooth.” 
{Macbeth, iii. 2, 13.) 
The expression often used, “ a tame snake,” meant a 
mean-spirited creature, from whom no danger was to be 
apprehended. 
A circumstantial account of a serpent nine feet long, 
found in a wood called St. Leonard’s Forest, near Hor¬ 
sham, in Sussex, written by John Trundle, 1614, is 
recorded in that repertory of curiosities, the Harleian 
Miscellany (voh iii. p. 109). Unfortunately the writer’s 
caution did not allow him to approach near enough to 
ascertain the exact size of the creature, or to describe its 
anatomy with scientific accuracy. 
“ This serpent,” he writes, “ or dragon, as some call it, is reputed to 
be nine feete, or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the forme 
■of an axletree of a cart; a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and 
somewhat smaller at both endes. The former part, which he shoots 
forth as a necke, is supposed to be an elle long; with a white ring, as 
