Arising out of this fear of the reptiles, and a marked inaccurate knowledge of their nature and habits, serpents were, in days of old, objects of great veneration, and the most absurd traditions were created in respect of their size and power. Only one or two of these need be mentioned to give an idea of the terrible nature of the reptiles which ancient imagination conjured up. At the Siege of Troy, two monstrous serpents came up out of the sea and killed Laocöon, the high priest of Apollo, and his two sons. According to Diodorus, the Sicilian, an Egyptian snake, measuring thirty cubits long, was captured and brought to Alexandria. While Regulus was with his army near Carthage, a terrible serpent stopped their advancement on the banks of the river Begrada, and made a meal of a large number of his soldiers before the reptile was put to death by a stone from a catapult.

Whenever a writer, be he ancient or modern, sits down to describe a snake, or "serpent" as he prefers to call the reptile, he seems to delight in letting his imagination have free scope in depicting a creature terrible in aspect, impossible in architectural construction, and omnivorous in tastes. Thus Virgil (Dryden's rendering) describes a serpent which crept from Anchises' tomb:

"His huge bulk on sev'n high volumes roll'd;

Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly gold:

Thus riding on his curls, he seem'd to pass

A POET'S SNAKES.

A rolling fire along, and singe the grass.
More various colours through his body run
Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun.
Betwixt the rising altars, and around,
The sacred monster shot along the ground;
With harmless play amidst the bowls he pass'd,
And with his lolling tongue assay'd his taste :
Thus fed with holy food the wondrous guest
Within the hollow tomb retir'd to rest."

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And undertaking the description of a snake (the one referred to above was a serpent) the same poet writes:

"So shines, renew'd in youth, the crested snake,
Who slept the winter in a thorny brake,
And, casting off his slough when spring returns,
Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns,
Restor❜d with pois'nous herbs: his ardent sides
Reflect the sun: and, rais'd on spires, he rides
High o'er the grass; hissing, he rolls along,
And brandishes by fits his forky tongue."

Thus we are given to understand that whilst both serpent and snake roll and ride, the serpent also has the faculty of shooting. And, whereas the serpent who lived in Anchises' tomb laps his food out of "bowls" with his "lolling tongue" like a tame mouser, the snake restores his strength, after a winter fast, with "poisonous herbs." Truly the reptiles of ancient times must have been wondrous

creatures.

But now let us turn to a modern poet, and see if we can come any nearer to an accurate descrip

tion of a serpent. This is what the serpents in Longfellow's "Hiawatha" look like:

"Soon he reached the fiery serpents,
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
Lying huge upon the water,
Sparkling, rippling in the water,
With their blazing crests uplifted,
Breathing fiery fogs and vapours,

So that none could pass beyond them."

True, this is a description of those legendary reptiles which guarded the habitation of Megissogwon, the magician; but in the words "fiery serpents" we have a distinct reference to the "fiery flying serpents" of the Old Testament ("fiery" on account of their bite, and "flying" because of their swift method of striking); and the power of breathing fiery fogs and vapours (surely a paradox) is nothing more than was attributed to the basilisk or cockatrice, which is alleged to have killed vegetation by breathing upon it. Nor indeed is the description more exaggerated than that given by many another author who might be quoted, nor does it exceed anything which a person of ordinary intelligence would write to-day if you were to put pen and paper before him and ask him to give you a faithful description of a common English adder.

Snakes always have been, and, I am afraid, always will be, credited with all kinds of wonderful attributes which they do not possess nor ever have possessed, and people seem always ready to believe

SNAKES SUPPOSED TO BE SLIMY.

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anything about them which is nasty or inaccurate. For instance, people who have never had the pleasure of handling the reptiles insist that they are "slimy." This is a very great mistake, and is as much a slander as if the snakes were to contend that such people never washed themselves. I have handled numerous snakes, but have not yet found one that was "" slimy." Sometimes they have been cold; but then snakes, being cold-blooded creatures, take their temperature from surrounding objects, so that they cannot be blamed for having a cold skin if they are kept in cold places. The error into which writers have fallen in regard to "slippery " or "slimy" snakes is perhaps not to be wondered at considering the natural prejudice against the reptiles, which would preclude a closer acquaintance than was absolutely necessary.

Virgil writes of the "slippery serpent."

William Secker says that

"Snails leave their slime behind them as well as serpents."

Chatterton asserts that

"The slimy serpent swelters in its course."

Byron goes to the extreme of explaining the actual colour of the "slime":

"If like a snake she steal within your walls

Till the black slime betray her as she crawls."

Shakespeare is even more explicit. In the play of

Antony and Cleopatra, after the Queen has died from the bite of an asp, one of Cæsar's guards, who has made an examination of the apartment, exclaims:

"This is an aspic's trail, and these fig leaves

Have slime upon them such as the aspic leaves
Upon the caves of Nile."

However thrilling and dramatic this finding of the 66 aspic's trail" may be, as matter of fact it is an utter violation of the truth. The snake which Cleopatra "applied to her breast," after having "pursued conclusions infinite of easy ways to die," was very probably the horned cerastes, a deadly reptile which, far from seeking the cool seclusion of the "caves of Nile," or any other caves, finds supreme enjoyment in basking in the hottest places it can discover.

"So grateful to the heat is this snake," says Bruce, the celebrated traveller, "that though the sun was burning hot all day, when we made a fire at night by digging a hole and burning wood to charcoal in it for dressing our victuals, it was seldom that we had fewer than half-a-dozen of these vipers, which burned themselves to death by approaching the embers."

The slime on the fig-leaves was assuredly not the trade mark of this dry-skinned reptile, nor was it the "slime" of any other kind of snake which Cleopatra could obtain. Shakespeare is very true to nature where he has had the opportunity of studying his