[{82}] The third is a little flying Squirill, with batlike winges, which hee spreads when hee jumpes from tree to tree, and does no harme.
Snakes.
Now because I am upon a treaty of the beasts, I will place this creature, the snake, amongst the beasts, having my warrant from the holy Bible; who, (though his posture in his passage be so different from all other, being of a more subtile and aidry nature, that hee can make his way without feete, and lifte himselfe above the superficies of the earth, as hee glids along,) yet may hee not bee ranked with any but the beasts, notwithstanding hee frequents the water, as well as the land.
There are of Snakes divers and of severall kindes, as be with us in England; but that Country hath not so many as in England have bin knowne.[375]
The generall Salvage name of them is Ascowke.[376]
The rattle Snakes.
There is one creeping beast or longe creeple, (as the name is in Devonshire,) that hath a rattle at his tayle that does discover his age; for so many yeares as hee hath lived, so many joynts are in that rattle, which soundeth (when it is in motion,) like pease in a bladder; and this beast is called a rattle Snake; but the Salvages give him the name of Sesick,[377] which some take to be the Adder; and it may well be so, for the Salvages are significiant in their denomination of any thing, and [it] is no lesse hurtfull than the Adder of England, nor no more. I have had my dogge venomed with troubling one of these, and so swelled that I had thought it would have bin his death: but with one Saucer of Salet oyle powred downe his throate he [{83}] has recovered, and the swelling asswaged by the next day. The like experiment hath bin made upon a boy that hath by chaunce troad upon one of these, and the boy never the worse. Therefore it is simplicity in any one that shall tell a bugbeare tale of horrible, or terrible Serpents, that are in that land.[378]
Mise.