in ancient times, to preserve their ashes pure and without commixture, they burnt the bodies of kings. A napkin hereof Pliny reports that Nero had; and the like, saith Paulus Venetus, the emperor of Tartary sent unto Pope Alexander; and also affirms that in some part of Tartary there were mines of iron whose filaments were woven into incombustible cloth. Which rare manufacture, although delivered for lost by Pancirollus, yet Salmuth, his commentator, affirmeth, that one Podocaterus, a Cyprian, had showed the same at Venice; and his materials were from Cyprus, where indeed, Dioscorides placeth them; the same is also ocularly confirmed by Vives upon Austin, and Maiolus in his Colloquies. And thus in our days do men practise to make long-lasting snasts3 for lamps out of alumen plumosum; and by the same we read in Pausanias, that there always burnt a lamp before the image of Minerva.

CHAPTER XV.

Of the Amphisbæna.

THAT the amphisbæna, that is, a smaller kind of serpent, which moveth forward and backward, hath two heads, or one at either extreme, was affirmed first by Nicander, and after by many others-by the author of the book, De Theriaca ad Pisonem, ascribed unto Galen; more plainly Pliny, Geminum habet caput, tanquam parum esset uno ore effundi venenum; but Elian most confidently, who referring the conceit of chimæra and hydra unto fables, hath set down this as an undeniable truth.

Whereunto while men assent, and can believe a bicipitous conformation in any continued species, they admit a gemination of principal parts, not naturally discovered in any animal. True it is, that other parts in animals are not equal; for some make their progression with many legs, even to the number of an hundred, as juli, scolopendra, or

napkins, which hee told mee hee could never gaine for moneye, till the Duke sent him that one for a new year's gifte.- Wr.

3 snasts.] The burnt wicks of candles. A Norfolk provincialism. See Forby's Vocab.

such as are termed centipedes; some fly with two wings, as birds and many insects; some with four, as all farinaceous or mealy-winged animals, as butterflies and moths; all vaginipennous or sheath-winged insects, as beetles and dorrs; some have three testicles, as Aristotle speaks of the buzzard; and some have four stomachs, as horned and ruminating animals; but, for the principal parts, the liver, heart, and especially the brain, regularly they are but one in any kind of species whatsoever.

And were there any such species or natural kind of animal, it would be hard to make good those six positions of body, which according to the three dimensions are ascribed unto every animal; that is, infra, supra, ante, retro, dextrorsum, sinistrorsum: for if (as it is determined) that be the anterior and upper part wherein the senses are placed, and that the posterior and lower part which is opposite thereunto, there is no inferior or former part in this animal: for the senses being placed at both extremes, doth make both ends anterior, which is impossible, the terms being relative, which mutually subsist, and are not without each other. And therefore this duplicity was ill contrived, to place one head at both extremes, and had been more tolerable to have settled three or four at one. And, therefore, also, poets have been more reasonable than philosophers, and Geryon or Cerberus less monstrous than amphisbæna.

Again, if any such thing there were, it were not to be obtruded by the name of amphisbæna, or as an animal of one denomination; for properly that animal is not one, but multiplicious or many, which hath a duplicity or gemination of principal parts. And this doth Aristotle define, when he affirmeth a monster is to be esteemed one or many, according to its principle, which he conceived the heart; whence he derived the original of nerves, and thereto ascribed many acts which physicians assign unto the brain. And therefore, if it cannot be called one, which hath a duplicity of hearts in his sense, it cannot receive that appellation with a plurality of heads in ours. And this the practice of Christians hath acknowledged, who have baptized these geminous births and double connascencies, with several names, as conceiving in them a distinction of souls, upon the divided execution of their functions; that is, while one wept, the other laughing;

while one was silent, the other speaking; while one awaked, the other sleeping; as is declared by three remarkable examples in Petrarch, Vincentius, and the Scottish history of Buchanan.

It is not denied there have been bicipitous serpents with the head at each extreme, for an example hereof we find in Aristotle, and of the like form in Aldrovandus we meet with the icon of a lizard; and of this kind, perhaps, might that amphisbæna be, the picture whereof Cassianus Puteus showed unto the learned Faber.4 Which double formations do often happen unto multiparous generations, more especially that of serpents; whose productions being numerous, and their eggs in chains or links together (which sometime conjoin and inosculate into each other), they may unite into various shapes, and come out in mixed formations. But these are monstrous productions, beside the intention of nature, and the statutes of generation, neither begotten of like parents, nor begetting the like again; but, irregularly produced, do stand as anomalies in the general book of nature. Which being shifts and forced pieces, rather than genuine and proper effects, they afford us no illation; nor is it reasonable to conclude from a monstrosity unto a species, or from accidental effects unto the regular works of nature.

Lastly, the ground of the conceit was the figure of this animal, and motion ofttimes both ways; for described it is to be like a worm, and so equally framed at both extremes, that at an ordinary distance it is no easy matter to determine which is the head; and therefore, some observing them to move both ways, have given the appellation of heads unto both extremes, which is no proper and warrantable denomi nation; for many animals, with one head, do ordinarily perform both different and contrary motions; crabs move sideling, lobsters will swim swiftly backward, worms and leeches

5

and of this kind, &c.] First in 3rd edition.

so equally framed, &c.] This explanation is quite correct. The amphisbæna is characterized by the rings of square scales which surround its body, and by its tail, being nearly similar in form and size to the head, so that it is not easy at a glance to distinguish the one from the other, the eyes being remarkably small. They are not venomous; have the power of moving both backwards and forwards-whence their name. It is very unaccountably spelt amphisbona, in Griffith's Cuvier, and in Gray's Synopsis, at the end of the 9th vol. of that work.

and

will move both ways, and so will most of those animals whose bodies consist of round and annulary fibres, and move by undulation; that is, like the waves of the sea, the one protruding the other, by inversion whereof they make a backward motion.

Upon the same ground hath arisen the same mistake concerning the scolopendra or hundred-footed insect, as is delivered by Rhodiginus from the scholiast of Nicander: Dicitur à Nicandro, àμpikapns, id est, dicephalus aut biceps fictum vero, quoniam retrorsum (ut scribit Aristotles) arrepit, observed by Aldrovandus, but most plainly by Muffetus, who thus concludeth upon the text of Nicander: Tamen pace tanti authoris dixerim, unicum illi duntaxat caput, licèt pari facilitate, prorsum capite, retrorsum ducente cauda, incedat, quod Nicandro aliisque imposuisse dubito: that is, under favour of so great an author, the scolopendra hath but one head, although with equal facility it moveth forward and backward, which I suspect deceived Nicander and others.

And therefore we must crave leave to doubt of this double-headed serpent until we have the advantage to behold, or have an iterated ocular testimony concerning such as are sometimes mentioned by American relators, and also such as Cassianus Puteus showed in a picture to Joannes Faber, and that which is set down under the name of amphisbæna europæa, in his learned discourse upon Hernandez's History of America.

CHAPTER XVI.

That young Vipers force their way through the bowels of their Dam. THAT the young vipers force their way through the bowels of their dam, or that the female viper, in the act of generation, bites off the head of the male, in revenge whereof the young ones eat through the womb and belly of the female, is a very ancient tradition; in this sense entertained in the hieroglyphicks of the Egyptians;7 affirmed by Herodotus, Nicander, Pliny, Plutarch, Elian, Jerome, Basil, Isidore;

6 And therefore, &c.] First added in 6th edition.

7 in this sense, &c.] Also from Pierius, 143, c. and Horapollo, 115.

seems countenanced by Aristotle and his scholar Theophrastus: from hence is commonly assigned the reason why the Romans punished parricides by drowning them in a sack with a viper. And so perhaps, upon the same opinion, the men of Melita, when they saw a viper upon the hand of Paul, said presently, without conceit of any other sin, " No doubt this man is a murderer, who, though he have escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth him not to live:" that is, he is now paid in his own way, the parricidous animal and punishment of murderers is upon him. And though the tradition were current among the Greeks, to confirm the same, the Latin name is introduced, Vipera quasi vi pariat. That passage also in the gospel, "O ye generation of vipers!" hath found expositions which countenance this conceit. Notwithstanding which authorities, transcribed relations and conjectures, upon enquiry we find the same repugnant unto experience and reason.8

And first, it seems not only injurious unto the providence of nature, to ordain a way of production which should destroy the producer, or contrive the continuation of the species by the destruction of the continuator, but it overthrows and frustrates the great benediction of God, "God blessed them, saying, be fruitful and multiply." Now, if it be so ordained that some must regularly perish by multiplication, and these be the fruits of fructifying in the viper, it cannot be said that God did bless, but curse, this animal; "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all thy life," was not so great a punishment unto the serpent after the fall, as "increase, be fruitful, and multiply," was, before. This were to confound the maledictions of God, and translate the curse of the woman upon the serpent; that is, in dolore paries, "in sorrow shalt thou bring forth;" which, being proper unto the woman, is verified best in the viper, whose delivery is not only accompanied with pain, but also

he

8 and reason.] Honest master Ross is very pertinacious in his oppo sition to the arguments of our author, as to the improbability and unreasonableness of the vulgar tenet respecting the viper—that it loses its own life in giving life to its progeny; and in some respects opposes them with some plausibility. (See Arcana, page 149.) For there are not wanting parallels and well-authenticated cases in which the act of propagation is fatal: though in the present case it is not so.