CHAP. XI.

Of Serpents... Of the venomous kind...Vipers...The Asp..... The Rattlesnake...The Whip Snake... The Jaculus... The Hæmorrhois...The Seps...The Coral Snake... The Cobracapella...Serpents without Venom...The Ringed Snake... The Blind Worm...The Amphisbæna...The Esculapian... The Boyuna...The Surinam Serpent...The Prince of Serpents...The Gerenda... The Great Boa...The Indian Boa ...The Anaconda... The Depona.

IN none of the countries of Europe is the Serpent tribe sufficiently numerous to be truly terrible. The venomous

malignity also 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 the poison of all operates in the same manner. A burning pain in the part, easi ly removeable by timely applications, is the worst effect

that we experience from the bite of the most venomous Serpents of Europe.

Though, however, Europe be happily delivered from these reptiles, in the warm countries that lie within the tropics, as well as in the cold regions of the north, where the inhabitants are few, the Serpents propagate in equal proportion. All along the swampy banks of the rivers Niger and 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. We have many histories of antiquity, presenting us such a picture; and exhibiting a whole nation sinking under the ravages of a single Serpent. We are told, that while Regulus led his army along the banks of the river Bagrada, in Africa, an enormous Serpent disputed his passage over. We are assured by Pliny, who says that he himself saw the skin, that it was a hundred and twenty feet long, and that it had destroyed many of the army. At last, however, the battering engines were brought out against it; and these assailing it from a distance, it was soon destroyed.

With respect to their conformation, all Serpents have a very wide mouth, in proportion to the size of the head; and, what is very extraordinary, they can gape and swal low the head of another animal which is three times as big as their own. To explain this, it must be observed, that the jaws of this animal do not open as ours, in the manner of a pair of hinges, where bones are applied to bones, and play upon one another; on the contrary, the Serpent's jaws are held together at the roots by a stretching muscular skin; by which means they open as widely as the animal chooses to stretch them, and admit of a prey much thicker than the Snake's own body. The throat, like stretching leather, dilates to admit the mor sel; the stomach receives it in part: and the rest remains in the gullet, till putrefaction and the juices of the Serpent's body unite to dissolve it.

As to the teeth, we shall speak more of them when we come to treat of the Viper's poison. The tongue in all these animals is long and forky. It is composed of two long fleshy substances, which terminate in sharp points, and are very pliable. Some of the Viper kind have tongues a fifth part of the length of their bodies; they are continually darting them out, but they are entirely harmless, and only terrify those who are ignorant of the real situation of their poison.

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The skin is composed of a number of scales, united to each other by a transparent membrane, which grows er as it grows older, until the animal changes it, which is generally done twice a year. This cover then bursts near the head, and the Serpent creeps from it, by an undulatory motion, in a new skin, much more vivid than the former. As the edges of the foremost scales lie over the ends of their following scales, so those edges, when the scales are erected, which the animal has a power of doing in a small

degree, catch in the ground, like the nails in the wheel of a chariot, and so promote and facilitate the animal's progressive motion. The erecting these scales is by means of a multitude of distinct muscles, with which each is supplied, and one end of which is tacked to the middle of the foregoing.

This tribe of animals, like that of fishes, seems to have no bounds put to its growth: their bones are in a great measure cartilaginous, and they are consequently capable of great extension; the older, therefore, a Serpent becomes, the larger it grows; and as they seem to live to a great age, they arrive at an enormous size.

Leguat assures us, that he saw a Serpent in Java, that was fifty feet long; and Carli mentions their growing to above forty feet. Mr. Wentworth, who had large concerns at Berbice, in America, assures us, that in that country they grow to an enormous length. He one day sent out a soldier, with an Indian, to kill a wild fowl for the table; and they accordingly went some miles from the fort: in pursuing their game, the Indian, who generally marched before, beginning to tire, went to rest himself upon the fallen trunk of a tree, as he supposed it to be; but when he was just going to sit down, the enormous monster began to move, and the poor savage, perceiving that he had approached a Liboya, the greatest of all the Serpent kind, dropped down in an agony. The soldier, who perceived at some distance what had happened, levelled at the Serpent's head, and, by a lucky aim, shot it dead: however, he continued his fire, until he was assured that the animal was killed; and then, going up to rescue his companion, who was fallen motionless by its side, he, to his astonishment, found him dead likewise, being killed by the fright. Upon his return to the fort, and telling what had happened, Mr. Wentworth ordered the animal to be brought up, when it was measured, and found to be thirty-six feet long.

In the East Indies they grow also to an enormous size: particularly in the island of Java, where we are assured that one of them will destroy and devour a buffalo. In a letter printed in the German Ephemerides, we have an account of a combat between an enormous Serpent and a buffalo, by a person who assures us that he was himself a spectator. The Serpent had, for some time, been waiting near the brink of a pool, in expectation of its prey; when a baffalo was the first that offered. Having darted upon the affrighted animal, it instantly began to wrap it round with its voluminous twistings; and at every twist the bones of the buffalo were heard to crack almost as loud as the report of a cannon. It was in vain that the poor animal struggled and bellowed; its enormous enemy entwined it too closely to get free; till at length, all its bones being mashed to pieces, like those of a malefactor on the wheel, and the whole body reduced to one uniform mass, the Serpent untwined its folds to swallow its prey at leisure. To prepare for this, and in order to make the body slip down the throat more readily, it was seen to lick the whole body over, and thus cover it with its mucus. It then began to swallow it at that end that offered least resistance; while its length of body was dilated to receive its prey, and thus took in at once a morsel that was three times its own thickness. We are assured by travellers, that these animals are often found with the body of a stag in their gullet, while the horns, which they are unable to swallow, keep sticking out at their mouths.

But it is happy for mankind that the rapacity of these frightful creatures is often their punishment; for whenever any of the Serpent kind have gorged themselves in this manner, whenever their body is seen particularly distended with food, they then become torpid, and may be approached and destroyed with safety.