though it was apparently affected in 50 seconds; and we cannot think this was a fair trial, because a very few minutes before it had bit 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 cerastes inhabits the greatest part of the eastern continent especially the desert sandy parts of it. It abounds in Syria, in the three Arabias, and in Africa. I never saw so many of them as in the Cyrenaicum, where the jerboa is frequent in proportion. He is a great lover of heat for though the sun was burning hot all day, when we made a fire at night. by digging a hole, and burning wood to charcoal init, for dressing our victuals, it was seldom we had fewer than half a dozen of these vipers, who burnt themselves to death by approaching the embers.

"Galen, speaking of the aspic in the great city of Alexandria, says, I have seen how speedily they, the aspics occasioned death. Whenever any person is condemned to die, whom they wish to end quickly and without torment, they put the viper to his breast, and suffering him there to creep a little, the man is presently killed. Pausanias speaks of particular serpents that were to be found in Arabia among the balsam-trees, several of which I procured both alive and dead, when I brought the tree from Beder Hunein; but they were still the same species of serpent, only some from sex, and some from want of age, had not the horns, though in every other respect they could not be mistaken. Ibn Sina, called by Europeans Avicenna, has described this animal very exactly; he says it is frequent in Shem, that is the country about and south of Damascus, and also in Egypt, and he makes a very good observation on their manners; that they do not go or walk straight, but move by contracting themselves.

"The general size of the cerastes, from the extremity of its snout to the end of its tail, is from 13 to 14 inches. Its head is triangular, very flat, but higher near where it joins the neck than toward the nose.

"The cerastes has sixteen small immoveable teeth, and in the upper jaw two canine teeth, hollow, crooked inward, and of a remarkably fine polish, white in colour, inclining to bluish. Near one fourth of the bottom is strongly fixed in the upper jaw, and folds back like a clasp knife, the point inclining inward; and the greatest part of the tooth is covered with a green soft membrane, not drawn tight, but, as it were wrinkled over it. Immediately above this is a slit along the back of the tooth, which ends nearly in the middle of it, where the tooth curves inwardly. From this aperture, I apprehend, that it sheds its poison, not from the point, where, with the best glasses, I never could perceive an aperture, so that the tooth is not a tube, but hollow only half way; the point being for making the incision, and by its

pressure occasioning the venom in the bag at the bottom of the fang to rise in the tooth, and spill itself through the slit into the wound.

"The animal is supposed to eat but seldom, or only when it is with young.

"The poison is very copious for so small a creature; it is fully as large as a drop of laudanum, dropped from a phial by a careful hand. Viewed through a glass, it appears not perfectly transparent or pellucid. I should imagine it has other resorvoirs than the bag under the tooth; for I compelled it to scratch eighteen pigeons upon the thigh as quick as possible, and they all died nearly in the same interval of time; but I confess the danger attending the dissection of the head of this creature, made me so cautious, that any observation I should make upon these parts would be less to be depended on.

"People have doubted whether or not this yellow liquor is the poison; and the reason has been, that animals who tasted it did not die, as when bitten; but this reason does not hold in modern physics. The viper, deprived of his canine teeth, an operation very easily performed, bites without any fatal consequence with the others.

"Of the incantation of serpents, there is no doubt of its reality. The Scriptures are full of it. All that have been in Egypt have seen as many different instances as they chose. Some have doubted that it was a trick, and that the animals so handled had been trained, and then disarmed of their power of hurting; and, fond of the discovery, they have rested themselves upon it, without experiment, in the face of all antiquity. But I will not hesitate to aver, that I have seen at Cairo, and this may be seen daily without trouble or expense, a man who came from above the catacombs, where the pits of the mummy birds are kept, who has taken a cerastes with his naked hand from a number of others lying at the bottom of the tub, has put it upon his bare head, covered it with the common red cap he wears, then taken it out, put it in his breast, and tied it about his neck like a necklace; after which it has been applied to a her, and bit it, which has died in a few minutes; and, to complete the experiment, the man has taken it by the neck, and beginning at its tail, has eaten it as one would do a carrot or a stalk of celery, without any seeming repugnance.

66

"I can myself vouch, that all the black people in the kingdom of Sennaar, whether Funge or Nuba, are perfectly armed against the bite of either scorpion or viper. They take the cerastes in their hands at all times, put them in their bosoms, and throw them to one another, as children do apples or balls, without having irritated them by this usage so much as to bite. The Arabs have not this secret naturally; but from their infancy they acquire

an exemption from the mortal consequences attending the bite of these animals, by chewing a certain root, and washing themselves; it is not anointing; with an infusion of certain plants in water.

"I constantly observed, that however lively the viper was before, upon being seized by any of these barbarians, he seemed as if taken with sickness and feebleness, frequently shut his eyes, and never turned his mouth toward the arm of the person that held him. I asked Kitton how they came to be exempted from this mischief? He said, they were born so, and so said the grave and respectable men among them. Many of the lighter and lower sort talked of enchantments by words and by writing but they all knew how to prepare any person by medicines, which were decoctions of herbs and roots.

"I have seen many thus armed for a season do pretty much the same feats as those that possessed the exemption naturally; the drugs were given me, and I several times armed myself, as I thought, resolved to try the experiment, but my heart always failed me when I came to trial." So far Mr. Bruce.

The cerastes is well known under the name of "horned viper," it is effectually distinguished, by two small horns, one over each eye. It was adopted as a hieroglyphic among the Egyptians, and appears not only on obelisks, columns of temples, statues, walls of palaces, but on mummies also. Notwithstanding which, the complete history of this creature is wanting.

The horns of the cerastes are placed immediately over the eyes; each of them is planted, as it were, among the small scales which form the superior part of the orbit; its root is surrounded by scales, smaller than those of the back; and it is of a pyramidical form, each face having a groove running up it. In general appearance, it resembles a grain of barley. The general colour of the back is yellowish, heightened by irregular blotches of a deeper colour, which represents small bands, crossing it. The under part of the body is lighter. The serpent is about two feet long, says count de la Cepede. This serpent supports hunger and thirst longer than most others; but is so ravenous, that he throws himself with avidity on the small birds, and other animals on which he feeds; and as, according to Belon, his skin is capable of the greatest distension, even to double its natural size, it is not surprising that he swallows so great a quantity of food as to render digestion extremely difficult; so that he falls into a kind of lethargic slumber, during which he is easily killed.

Most authors of antiquity, and of the middle ages, thought that this was one of those serpents which could, with the greatest ease, turn themselves all manner of ways; and they report, that instead of advancing in a straight line, he always took more or less of a circuitous course to attain his object. But, whatever be the

address or swiftness of his motions, he escapes with difficulty from those eagles, or rather, perhaps, vultures, which stoop at him with exceeding rapidity: and which, for their services in ridding the country of these venomous reptiles, were considered as sacred by the Egyptians. Nevertheless, these serpents have always been considered as extremely cunning, both in escaping their enemies, and in seizing their prey: they have even been named insidious; and it is reported of them, that they hide themselves in holes adjacent to the highways, and in the ruts of wheels, in order more suddenly to spring upon passengers.

Belon says, that the young of the cerastes burst their eggs in the womb of the parent; but Gesner reports, that a noble Venetian kept a female cerastes, three feet in length, during some time, which laid four or five eggs, the size of pigeons' eggs: perhaps both ways may take place.

It is thought the cerastes was consecrated by the ancient Egyptians; for Herodotus describes serpents which answer to the character of this reptile, as being kept in a temple.

I would

So far is abstracted from the successor to Buffon. only add on this last article, that as we have seen the naja worshipped in India, so the cerastes might be worshipped in Egypt, as being one of the symbols of that deity who more immediately presides over death. Vide FRAGMENT, No. 495.

It is proper now to endeavour to apply this information to a specific object. It will be seen in the EXPOSITORY INDEX, that I have thought shephiphoon, to which the tribe of Dan is compared, Gen. xlix. might be the cerastes: it is so rendered by the Vulgate. I shall, however, abstract the remarks of Michaelis, Quest. Ixii. because they manifest the importance of that information on Scripture natural history, which it is our present endeavour to promote.

The Arabs name this serpent siff, [siphon or suphon,] and that seems not very distant from the Hebrew root of the word sififoon, or shephiphon. This serpent, or some other, but this most probably, is called by the Orientals, "the lier in ambush; for so both the LXX and Samaritan, who are not in the habit of copying each other, render the text in Genesis and this appellation well agrees with the manner of the cerastes. Pliny says, that "the cerastes hides its whole body in the sand, leaving only its horns exposed; which attracts birds, who suppose them to be grains of barley, till they are undeceived, too late, by the darting of the serpent upon them." The Chaldee of Jonathan translates "heads of serpents," which seems to allude to such a story; and which may be an appellation of the cerastes. Ephraim the Syrian says, there is a kind of serpents, whose heads only are seen above the ground. Prosper Alpinus thinks, that only the male has horns. Bocart thinks that the hemorrhois also has

horns. On this article, we refer to Mr. Bruce, who mentions a
cerastes without horns, which we may conjecture to be the he-
morrhois.

As to the effects of the venom of the cerastes, the ancients say,
Nicander for instance, that its bite causes but little pain; the
wound hardens; blisters, filled with a dark matter, rise around it;
the upper part of the feet, then the knees, experience a disagreea-
ble weariness some add, that violent vertigoes succeed, and a
tension in the private parts. Some say, that death follows on
the third day; but Nicander says on the ninth.

Michaelis finds a difficulty in the mode of attack of the Hebrew
shephiphon on "the heels of a horse, so as to make his rider fall
backward." He supposes that the phrase strictly means, that
the horse throws the rider off behind him: "and," says he, "I
should be curious to know how that is accomplished. Commen-
tators commonly say, because the horse rears up when wounded
in the heel. Perhaps they are bad horsemen. In such circum-
stances, a horse would kick, rather than rear up on his hind legs:
and the rider would be thrown over his neck, rather than over
the crupper." I feel the force of this observation, and cannot
but agree to it. I would therefore doubt. whether the word ren-
dered backward should be restrictively so taken; for instance,
suppose the cerastes has bit the horse in the left hind leg, the
horse kicking out that leg, and his rider perceiving the cause,
would, to avoid the serpent, throw himself off on the further side
of the horse from where the serpent was. I say, he would throw
himself off, by the opposite side of the horse; which I think suffi-
ciently meets the meaning of the Hebrew word: and it makes no
difference on this notion, whether the front leg or the hind leg be
bitten; whether the right leg. or the left leg: the rider would
certainly avoid that side of the horse where the serpent was, and
would throw himself off on that side where he was not. Ob-
serve, that the margin instead of ipel, reads nepel; which, that it
may signify a person's causing himself to fall, vide FRAGMENT,

No. 208.

In the EXPOSITORY INDEX I have said that Dan probably re-
sembled the cerastes, in feeding full, and then sinking into tor-
pidity, in consequence of such repletion. I think the induce-
ments held out by the spies of the Danites, Judg. xvii. 9, 10. are
precisely adapted to such a people; and we are told in the end
of the chapter, that they set up the graven image, had their
priests, and here they remained, "till the day of the captivity
of the land," i. e. distant from interference with the affairs of
Israel, and determinately settled apart from their brethren. See
verses 7, 28.

It remains that we pay some attention to the opinion of Mr.
Bruce, that the cerestes is, under other names, the serpent meant