their voracity, their power to charm, or fascinate, and their ability to inspire horror. That they manifest art and calculation— especially those large serpents of the tropical countries-in securing prey, is not denied; but as much can be asserted of all kinds of animals. Of these kinds, their strength is irresistable, when brought in competition with any other creature, and their courage equal to their strength, as they will not turn aside for the fiercest tiger, elephant, leopard, or human being; nay, they all flee its sight in the utmost consternation. When one of these creatures has seized its victim, even though it be a tiger of the largest size, it never lets go its hold, though the struggle continue for days before it gets the victory. Its management during such contests, its patience till it has the mastery, the advantage it secures over its victim at every struggle, certainly shows the creature's calculation: but as much may be said of any other animal. There is, it is true, a terrific majesty in the appearance and demeanour of a large serpent, as whoever has met with a rattlesnake, can testify. This serpent will not precipitately flee when discovered, but if it moves at all, its motions are at its leisure, maintaining a grave majesty as it views its disturber, with a sideway look, as if ascertaining the nature of its enemy, as it retires from sight. Its manners in this respect may be compared to the lion, which maintains its majesty by its slow and considerate attitudes, when suddenly aroused from its lair.

But before we leave this subject, we will give several accounts of the larger animals of the serpent species, as known in the tropical countries of the old world. "Not many years since, Mr. Edwards, the English resident in the Island of Ceylon, saw there a serpent which measured thirty-three feet four inches. It was covered with scales, ridged, or partly elevated along the back. Its head was of a green color, with large black spots, in the middle, and yellow streaks around the jaws, and a yellow circle, like a golden collar around his neck, and behind that a black spot. Its head was flatish, and broad, its eyes monstrously large, very bright and terrible. Its sides were of a dusky olive color. Its back was very beautiful, a broad streak of yellow curled and waved at the sides; along the edges of this, ran a narrow streak of flesh color, on the outsides of which was a broad streak of a bright yellow, waved, colored and spotted at small distances, with roundish and long blotches, of a blood color. When it moved in the sun, it appeared exquisitely beautiful. It had coiled.

itself among the branches of a large palm tree, watching for its prey; when, not long after, there passed beneath it a creature of the fox kind, when it darted down as swift as a ray of light, seized it, broke its bones, and soon swallowed it; when it again resumed its place among the boughs of the tree, where it remained during the night, which circumstance was known from what transpired in the morning; which was as follows:

The sun was but a little way up, when there passed on its way beneath the fatal tree, a tiger, about the size of a yearling heifer, which was no sooner exactly beneath the serpent, and within its reach, than he darted down, seized the animal by the back with his teeth, at the same time twining itself several times around its body. It then loosened its teeth from the tiger's back, and griped its entire head in its mouth, tearing, grinding and choking it all at once, while the furious tiger resisted and fought to the utmost of its power. But finding it hard to conquer, and the bones not easily broken, it had recourse to stratagem; which was to wind its tail around the tiger's neck, and drag him to the tree, against which the serpent leaned its victim, when it darted its coils several times round both the tiger and the tree, crushing him against it, till his ribs and bones were broken and bruised to pieces. After it had killed the tiger, with inexpressible torture, of about a day's continuance, the serpent, during the night, slavered it over with the juices of its tongue, and the day following swallowed it whole. This distended its stomach so much that it could not run; when Mr. Edwards and several of the islanders assailed and killed it. Brown's Bible Dictionary, under the head "Serpent."

But we have accounts which may be relied on, of serpents of a much greater length, amounting even to eighty and a hundred and twenty feet, natives of Africa, the Indies, and of the tropical islands. A curious and thrilling account of the capture of one of these animals in Egypt is given by Diodorus Siculus who lived in the time of Augustus Cæsar, the greatest historian of the age. "A number of hunters, says that author, encouraged by the munificent offers of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, resolved to bring him one of those serpents to Alexandria. This enormous reptile, thirty cubits long, (which is fifty feet) lived on the banks of a certain river, the Nile it is likely. There he dwelt, reclined upon the ground, near his cave; his body coiled in a circle; but when it saw any animal approach the bank where he lay, he darted upon it with dreadful impetus, seized it in his jaws, or strangled it in the folds of his tail. The hunters descrying him from a distance, conceived that they should easily succeed in taking him alive in their nets and load him with chains. They advanced with resolution, but when they were come within a short distance of the huge animal, the ferocious glare of his eyes, his rough and scaly hide, the noise which he made in rousing himself, and his open mouth armed with long and curved teeth, inspired them with alarm. They ventured, however, to approach, step by step, till so near as to throw some heavy chains upon him; but scarcely had they touched the monster, when he turned furiously round, seized the nearest hunter in his mouth, and killed another by a stroke of his tail. The rest now fled in terror; but being unwilling to forego the rewards of the king, they invented another

method of accomplishing their purpose. They made a net of strong ropes, proportioned in size to that of the serpent, so as to hold him if they could but entangle him in it. To accomplish this, they watched a time when he left his cave to seek for prey, and blocked up its mouth with large stones. Then at a little distance, they spread the net over a space of ground, and kept themselves as silent as as they could, till the serpent's return, when he found his abode beset by a host of armed men, horses, and dogs. At first, on discovering this, the monster raised his head to a great height, so as to overlook men, horses and all, uttering frightful hissings. But being intimidated at the great number of his foes, and as the darts and (iron) arrows," shot from steel bows, "assailing him from every quarter, he rushed with violence to the entrance of his cave. But finding this blocked up, and at a loss how to escape from the attack of the hunters, the noise of their trumpets and dogs, he turned to flee, or to fight, when they drew the net around him, in which he became entangled, and soon wearied himself with tremendous efforts to break through, but was subdued, and conveyed to Alexandria, to the great astonishment of the populace, where he was kept in a place fited up for his reception. If the passion of anger and rage, is an evidence of the subtilty of serpents, then have they the pre-eminence over all other creatures, and especially the boa, the anaconda, with the crested basiliscus of India; but we do not know that this circumstance is evidence.

Now a serpent of either of these kinds, but especially the anaconda, as it is the longest of all land serpents, rolling or whirling its folds in a pyramid along the earth, as Milton has supposed, towering on high, glittering in its glory of maculated splendor, would not be an unseemly minister of the arch fiend, whereby to introduce himself to Eve, the queen of the earth, and of the human race, on a business which was to determine the fates of millions, so far as the sufferings of this life was concerned, at least.

To give the reader an idea of the brilliant thought of Milton, respecting the original form and manner of the moving of the serpent, as it existed on the plains of Paradise, we present a plate of the creature, beneath the thick boughs of a tree, around which are entwined the redundant foliage of the grape vine, laden with fruit as large as apples. (See the Plate.)

But as it respects certainty about the foregoing, in identifying the true animal by which Eve was destroyed, the reader will have his own belief; yet the writer of these sheets inclines to the opinion that it was the Orang-outang, because that creature is the most cunning, the most artful, and the most subtil of all the animals of the globe, and approaches nearer to man, both in intellect and form, than any other creature. The female suckles her young at the breast, holding it in her arms, the same

as a woman would do, fondling it with equal delight and endear

ment.

As a powerful evidence that the serpent was the animal which Satan made use of on the occasion of the fall, as thought by many, is the circumstance of the universal terror this creature inspires, when met with by man; imagining that in this fact is fulfilled the word of God, which was addressed to the serpent, at the time he was judged, in the garden with Adam and Eve; which was, "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, it (Christ) shall bruise thy head, (the devil,) and thou (devil) shalt bruise his (Christ's) heel," in death. Christ is the seed here meant, which was emphatically the seed of the woman, (Mary) and not of man; which cannot be said of any other daughter of Adam's race, as it is from the man that the germinating principle of human existence proceeds. The enmity therefore, which is here alluded to, was to exist between Satan and Christ, and not between the human race and the race of snakes, or any other animal; as it is said in scripture, that Christ came into the world to destroy the works of the devil, and to bruise Satan under the feet of the saints, according to the New Testament, and has nothing to do with the shuddering sensations felt when we meet with this reptile. But Universalists believe this enmity consisted in the opposition the heavenly man and the earthly man had to each other in the human breast, when first created. But this idea is exploded, when we recollect that God could never have been the author of two contending 'powers in the same human soul, as it came first from his hand, the one an enemy to all righteousness, and the other consonant to all holiness; as this would seem to be a conflict, between the powers of the mind and the passions, set on foot by the creator, for no other purpose than man's ruin.

"Thou shalt bruise his heel:-this is understood of Christ, the seed of the woman. His heel means, first his humanity, whereby he trod upon the earth, and which the devil by the instrumentality of wicked men, bruised and killed. Second his people, his members, whom Satan in divers ways bruises, vexes, and afflicts, while they are on earth, but cannot reach either Christ their head in heaven, or themselves, when they shall be advanced thither. In this verse therefore, notice is given of a perpetual quarrel commenced between the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of the devil, among men; war is proclaimed between the seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent, the devil." Rev. xii. 17. Benson's Commentary on Genesis, 3d Chap.

But were we to conclude, that the word of God in the above respect is fulfilled, in the circumstance of the inclination we feel to kill this frightful reptile when met with, and the inclination of serpents to bite whatever comes in their way, we do not perceive,

that by this, any great thing worthy of the divine foresight, or of use to man, is made out; as all snakes will die some how or other, even if this enmity had never existed. It is true nevertheless, that a natural enmity exists between serpents and men, and also, between the serpent tribes and all other animals; but wholly on account of the poison fang of smaller serpents of various kinds, and of the bone breaking power of the larger, which have not the poison teeth; and this is reason enough, without superadding the influence of Satan, to those two qualifications.

Whoever may have contemplated a serpent of the larger kinds, or even the common rattlesnake, and especially its head, will bear witness, that there is assembled all that is necessary to constitute horror, to freeze the blood, to paralize courage, and to cower the fiercest eye, whether of man or beast; as if the audacious spirits, the fallen angels, had taken up their abode in the bodies of serpents. The terrifying form of a serpent's head above that of all other animals, must have been the reason why the son of Sirach, the writer of the book of Ecclesiasticus, chap. xxv. 15, has said, "there is no head above the head of a serpent." Apocrypha.

There is no animal which will fight more obstinately than the serpent, with any creature which attacks it. There is nothing which can inspire equal terror with the anaconda and great li-boa; a whole town or neighborhood, in the countries where they are found, is thrown into the utmost consternation, if it is but announced that an animal of this sort has been seen anywhere near, none daring to stir abroad till the creature's departure. In certain districts of both Africa and South America, the serpents have so multiplied, of all sorts, as that they have obtained exclusive possession, frightening away every other creature, even animals of the most ferocious description. Regulus, a Roman general, nearly three hundred years B. C., while leading his army along the banks of the river Bagrada, in Africa, met with a serpent, which disputed his passage across, destroying great numbers of his men, which he however killed, with his battering rams and catapulta, machines formed for the purpose of heaving large stones with force and precision. Pliny, the most learned of the Roman historians who flourished in the first century, states that he had seen the skin of this serpent, and that it was one hundred and twenty feet in length.

Though we have indulged our thoughts at some length on the subject of serpents, yet we cannot well forbear to give an account which respects the power of serpents to charm or fascinate such creatures as venture to gaze steadfastly upon its eyes. But whether such a power, if it cxists, is the result of subtilty and cunning, or is the mere force of instinct, in the animal, is the question, which, as yet is not decided, and ma ny doubt it altogether. Few human beings so far as we have