of its poisonous associates to keep a humble distance.

The Basilisk, however, is an inoffensive animal, a native of South America, residing principally among trees, and feeding like many of its tribe on insects. It is immediately distinguished from all the rest of its kind, by a long, conic cap-like protuberance on the top of its head, which points a little backwards; and by a kind of fin, radiates like those of a fish, which extends from the shoulders down to the back and half way along the tail. This fin it can elevate or depress at pleasure, and may probably be serviceable in its progression from one branch of a tree to another. It is about a foot and a half, of great agility, and is said to be able occasionally to swim with perfect ease.]

CHAP. VIIL

Of Serpents in general.

We now come to a tribe that not only their deformity, their venom, their ready malignity, but also our prejudices, and our very religion, have taught us to detest. The serpent has from the beginning been the enemy of man; and it has hitherto continued to terrify and annoy him, notwithstanding all the arts which have been practised to destroy it. Formidable in itself, it deters the invader from the pursuit; and from its figure capable of finding shelter in a little space, it is not

easily discovered by those who would venture to try the encounter. Thus possessed at once of potent arms and inaccessible or secure retreats, it baffles all the arts of man, though never so earnestly bent upon its destruction.

For this reason, there is scarcely a country in the world that does not still give birth to this poisonous brood, that seem formed to quell human pride, and repress the boasts of security. Mankind have driven the lion, the tiger, and the wolf from their vicinity; but the snake and the viper still defy their power, and frequently punish their insolence.

Their numbers, however, are thinned by human assiduity; and it is possible some of the kinds are wholly destroyed. In none of the countries of Europe are they sufficiently numerous to be truly terrible; the philosopher can meditate in the fields without danger, and the lover seek the grove without fearing any wounds but those of metaphor. The various malignity that has been ascribed to European serpents of old, is now utterly unknown; there are not above three or four kinds that are dangerous, and their poison operates in all in the same manner. A burning pain in the part, easily removeable by timely applications, is the worst effect that we experience from the bite of the most venomous serpents of Europe. The drowsy death, the starting of the blood from every pore, the insatiable and burning thirst, the melting down the solid mass of the whole form into one heap of putrefaction, these are horrors with which we are entirely unacquainted.

But though we have thus reduced these dangers, having been incapable of wholly removing them, in other parts of the world they still rage with all their

ancient malignity. Nature seems to have placed them as centinels to deter mankind from spreading too widely, and from seeking new abodes till they have thoroughly cultivated those at home. In the warm countries that lie within the tropic, as well as in the cold regions of the north, where the inhabitants are few, the serpents propagate in equal proportion. But of all countries those regions have them in the greatest abundance where the fields are unpeopled and fertile, and where the climate supplies warmth and humidity. All along the swampy banks of the river Niger or Oroonoko, where the sun is hot, the forests thick, and the men but few, the serpents cling among the branches of the trees in infinite numbers, and carry on an unceasing war against all other animals in their vicinity. Travellers have assured us that they have often seen large snakes twining round the trunk of a tall tree, encompassing it like a wreath, and thus rising and descending at pleasure. In these countries, therefore, the serpent is too formidable to become an object of curiosity, for it excites much more violent sensations.

We are not, therefore, to reject as wholly fabulous the accounts left us by the ancients of the terrible devastations committed by a single serpent. It is probable, in early times, when the arts were little known, and mankind were but thinly scattered over the earth, that serpents, continuing undisturbed possessors of the forest, grew to an amazing magnitude;, and every other tribe of animals fell before them. It then might have happened, that serpents reigned the tyrants of a district for centuries together. To animals of this kind, grown by time and rapacity to a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet in length, the