248 POPULAR SCRIPTURE ZOOLOGY.

of air, again ejecting it with such force as to be heard at a
great distance.” Captain Riley, in his ‘Authentic Narrative,’
describes the colours of this serpent as “the most beautiful
in nature.”

Some naturalists consider the Coluber aspis, or asp of
antiquity, to be that to which the Arabs give the name of
El Haji, it is of a green colour, marked obliquely with
brown bands, and measuring from three to five feet in
length; the asp is celebrated in history as the instrament
by which Cleopatra destroyed herself, after the defeat of
Antony at the battle of Actium. Lord Bacon says that its
bite is the least painful kind of death, and supposes its
poison to have some affinity to opium. The cockatrice, men-
tioned in Isaiah xi., ‘And the sucking child shall play on the
hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on
the cockatrice’ den,’ is still supposed to be the adder. The
Viper is again named in Acts xxviii., when St. Paul, on being
cast on the island of Melita (Malta), was bitten by one; both -
Jews and heathens considered serpents to be often the
agents of God’s punishments, and the natives of Melita
believed from this accident that Paul was a murderer,
whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suf-
fereth not to live.” The Talmud relates the story of a man,