Cerastes.
Heath. Sc.
London Publish’d Decr. 1.st 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.
Lucan, in Cato’s march through the desert of the Cyrenaicum in Search of Juba, gives such a catalogue of these venomous animals, that we cannot wonder, as he insinuates, that great part of the Roman army was destroyed by them; yet I will not scruple to aver this is mere fable. I have travelled across the Cyrenaicum in all its directions, and never saw but one species of viper, which was the Cerastes, or Horned Viper, now before us. Neither did I ever see any of the snake kind that could be mistaken for the viper. I apprehend the snake cannot subsist without water, as the Cerastes, from the places in which he is found, seems assuredly to do. Indeed those that Lucan speaks of must have been all vipers, because the mention of every one of their names is followed by the death of a man.
There are no serpents of any kind in Upper Abyssinia that ever I saw, and no remarkable varieties even in Low, excepting the large snake called the Boa, which is often above twenty feet in length, and as thick as an ordinary man’s thigh. He is a beast of prey, feeds upon antelopes, and the deer kind, which having no canine teeth, consequently no poison, he swallows whole, after having broken all its bones in pieces, and drawn it into a length to be more easily mastered. His chief residence is by the grassy pools of rivers that are stagnant. Notwithstanding which, we hear of the Monk Gregory telling M. Ludolf, that serpents were so frequent in Abyssinia, that every man carried with him a stick bent in a particular manner, for the more commodiously killing these creatures, and this M. Ludolf recommends as a discovery. And Jerome Lobo, among the rest of his fables, has some on this subject likewise. A cold and rainy country can never be a habitation for vipers. We see, on the contrary, that their favourite choice are deserts and burning sand, without verdure, and without any moisture whatever.
The very learned, though too credulous, Prosper Alpinus, says, that many have assured him, that near the lakes contiguous to the sources of the Nile there is a number of basiliscs, about a palm in length, and the thickness of a middle finger; that they have two large scales, which they use as wings, and crests and combs upon their head, from which they are called Basilisci or Reguli, that is, crowned, crested, or kingly serpents; and he says that no person can approach these lakes without being destroyed by these crested snakes.
With all submission to this naturalist’s relation, I should imagine he could not have heard the description of these lakes from many travellers, if all those that approached them were killed by the basiliscs. I shall only answer for this, that having examined the Lake Gooderoo, those of Court Ohha, and Tzana, the only lakes near the sources of the Nile, I never yet saw one serpent there, whether crowned or uncrowned, nor did I ever hear of any, and therefore believe this account as fabulous as that of the Acontia and other animals he speaks of in this whole chapter[86]. The basilisc is a species of serpent, frequently made mention of in scripture, though never described, farther than that he cannot be charmed so as to do no hurt, nor trained so as to delight in music; which all travellers who have been in Egypt know is exceedingly possible, and frequently seen. “For, behold, I will send basiliscs among you, saith the scripture, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord[87]”. And[88] “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and basilisc[89] &c.”
I shall mention one name more, under which the Cerastes goes, because it is equivocal, and has been misunderstood in scripture, that is Tseboa, which name is given it in the Hebrew, from its different colours and spots. And hence the Greeks[90] have called it by the name of Hyæna, because it is of the same reddish colour, marked with black spots as that quadruped is. And the same fable is applied to the serpent and quadruped, that they change their sex yearly.
Some philosophers, from particular system, have judged from a certain disposition of this animal’s scales, that it is what they term, Coluber, while others, from some arrangement of the scales of its tail, will have it to be what they call Boa. I enter not into the dispute, it is here as faithfully represented as the size will permit, only I shall observe that, unless Boa means something more than I know it does, the name is ill chosen when applied to any species of poisonous serpents, because it is already the proper name of the large snake, just mentioned, that is not viviparous, and has no poison. Pliny and Galen say, that the young vipers are so fierce as to become parricides, and destroy their mother upon their birth. But this is surely one of the ill-grounded fancies these authors have adopted. The Cerastes is mentioned by name in Lucan, and without warranting the separate existence of any of the rest, I can see several that are but the Cerastes under another term. The thebanus ophites, the ammodytes, the torrida dipsas, and the prester[91], all of them are but this viper described from the form of its parts, or its colours. Cato must have been marching in the night when he met this army of serpents. The Cerastes hides itself all day in holes in the sand, where it lives in contiguous and similar houses to those of the jerboa, and I have already said, that I never but once found any animal in this viper’s belly, but one jerboa in a gravid female cerastes.
I kept two of these last-mentioned creatures in a glass jar, such as is used for keeping sweetmeats, for two years, without having given them any food; they did not sleep, that I observed, in winter, but cast their skins the last days of April.