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in question occurs in Gen. xlix. 17, and forms part of the prophecy of Jacob respecting his children: "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."

Putting aside the deeper meaning of this prophecy, there is here an evident allusion to the habits of the CERASTES, or HORNED VIPER, a species of venomous serpent, which is plentiful in Northern Africa, and is found also in Palestine and Syria. It is a very conspicuous reptile, and is easily recognised by the two horn-like projections over the eyes. The name Cerastes, or horned, has been given to it on account of these projections.

This snake has a custom of lying half buried in the sand, awaiting the approach of some animal on which it can feed. Its usual diet consists of the jerboas and other small mammalia, and as they are exceedingly active, while the Cerastes is slow and sluggish, its only chance of obtaining food is to lie in wait. It will always take advantage of any small depression, such as the print of a camel's foot, and, as it finds many of these depressions in the line of the caravans, it is literally "a serpent by the way, an adder in the path."

According to the accounts of travellers, the Cerastes is much more irritable than the cobra, and is very apt to strike at any object which may disturb it. Therefore, whenever a horseman passes along the usual route, his steed is very likely to disturb a Cerastes lying in the path, and to be liable to the attack of the irritated reptile. Horses are instinctively aware of the presence of the snake, and mostly perceive it in time to avoid its stroke. Its small dimensions, the snake rarely exceeding two feet in length, enable it to conceal itself in a very small hollow, and its brownish-white colour, diversified with darker spots, causes it to harmonize so thoroughly with the loose sand in which it lies buried, that, even when it is pointed out, an unpractised eye does not readily perceive it.

Even the cobra is scarcely so dreaded as this little snake, whose bite is so deadly, and whose habits are such as to cause travellers considerable risk of being bitten.

THE VIPER, OR EPHEH.

Passages in which the word Epheh occurs—El-effah—The Sand Viper, or Toxicoa -Its appearance and habits-The Acshub-Adder's poison-The SpuughSlange--The Cockatrice, or Tsepha-The Yellow Viper-Ancient ideas concerning the Cockatrice-Power of its venom.

We now come to the species of snake which cannot be identified with any certainty, and will first take the word epheh, which is curiously like to the Greek ophis. From the context of the three passages in which it occurs, it is evidently a specific, and not a collective name, but we are left in much doubt as to the precise species which is intended by it. The first of those passages occurs in Job xx. 16: "The viper's (epheh) tongue shall slay him." The second is found in Isa. xxx. 6: "The burden of the beasts of the south into the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper (epheh) and fiery flying serpent." The last of these passages occurs in ch. lix. 5 of the same book: That which is crushed breaketh

out into a viper" (epheh).

The reader will see that in neither of those passages have we the least intimation as to the particular species which is signified by the word epheh, and the only collateral evidence which we have on the subject fails exactly in the most important point. We are told by Shaw that in Northern Africa there is a small snake, the most poisonous of its tribe, which is called by the name of El-effah, a word which is absolutely identical with the Epheh of the Old Testament. But, as he does not identify the effah, except by saying that it rarely exceeds a foot in length, we gain little by its discovery.

Mr. Tristram believes that he has identified the Epheh of the Old Testament with the Sand-Viper, or Toxicoa (Echis arenicola). This reptile, though very small, and scarcely exceeding a foot in length, is a dangerous one, though its bite is not so deadly as

that of the cobra or cerastes. It is variable in colour, but has angular white streaks on its body, and a row of whitish spots along the back. The top of the head is dark, and variegated

with arrow-shaped white marks.

The Toxicoa is very plentiful in Northern Africa, Palestine, Syria, and the neighbouring countries, and, as it is exceedingly

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active, is held in some dread by the natives. The Toxicoa is closely allied to the dreaded Horatta-pam snake of India (Echis carinata).

The old Hebraists can make nothing of the word, but it is not unlikely that a further and fuller investigation of the ophiology of Northern Africa may succeed where mere scholarship, unallied with zoological knowledge, has failed.

THE next word is acshub (pronounced ǎk-shoob). It only occurs in one passage, namely Ps. cxl. 3: "They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent (nachash); adder's (acshub) poison

is under their lips." The precise species represented by this word is unknown. Buxtorf, however, explains the word as the Spitter, "illud genus quod venenum procul exspuit." Now, if we accept this derivation, we must take the word acshub as a synonym for pethen. We have already identified the Pethen with the Naja haje, a snake which has the power of expelling the poison to some distance, when it is out of reach of its enemy. Whether the snake really intends to eject the poison, or whether it is merely flung from the hollow fangs by the force of the suddenly-checked stroke, is uncertain. That the Haje cobra can expel its poison is an acknowledged fact, and the Dutch colonists. of the Cape have been so familiarly acquainted with this habit, that they have called this reptile by the name of Spuugh-Slange, or Spitting Snake, a name which, if we accept Buxtorf's etymology, is precisely equivalent to the word acshub.

ANOTHER name of a poisonous snake occurs several times in the Old Testament. The word is tsepha, or tsiphôni, and it is sometimes translated as Adder, and sometimes as Cockatrice. The word is rendered as Adder in Prov. xxiii. 32, where it is said that wine "biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Even in this case, however, the word is rendered as Cockatrice in the marginal translation.

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It is found three times in the Book of Isaiah. Ch. xi. 8 "The weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den." Also, ch. xiv. 29: "Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's (nachash) nest shall come forth a cockatrice (tsepha), and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent." The same word occurs again in ch. lix. 5: "They hatch cockatrice' eggs." In the prophet Jeremiah we again find the word: "For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.”

This last passage gives us a little, but not much, assistance in identifying the Tsepha. We learn by it that the Tsepha was one of the serpents that were not subject to charmers, and so we are able to say that it was neither the cobra, which we have identified with the Pethen of Scripture, nor the Cerastes or Horned Snake, which has been shown to be the Shephiphon. Our evidence is therefore only of a negative character, and the

only positive evidence is that which may be inferred from the passage in Isa. xiv. 29, where the Tsepha is evidently thought to be more venomous than the ordinary serpent or Nachash.

Mr. Tristram suggests that the Tsepha of Scripture may possibly be the Yellow Viper (Daboia xanthica), which is one of the largest and most venomous of the poisonous serpents which are found in Palestine, and which is the more dangerous on account of its nocturnal habits. This snake is one of the Katukas, and is closely allied to the dreaded Tic-polonga of Ceylon, a serpent which is so deadly, and so given to infesting houses, that one of the judges was actually driven out of his official residence by it.

As to the old ideas respecting the origin of the Cockatrice, a very few words will suffice for them. This serpent was thought to be produced from an egg laid by a cock and hatched by a viper. "For they say," writes Topsel," that when a cock groweth old, he layeth a certain egge without any shell, in stead whereof it is covered with a very thick skin, which is able to withstand the greatest force of an easie blow or fall. They say moreover that this Egge is laid only in the summer time, about the beginning of Dog days, being not so long as a Hen's Egge, but round and orbicular. Sometimes of a dirty, sometimes of a boxy, and sometimes of yellowish muddy colour, which Egge, afterwards sat upon by a Snake or a Toad, bringeth forth the Cockatrice, being half a foot in length, the hinder part like a Snake, the former part like a Cock, because of a treble combe on his forehead.

"But the vulgar opinion of Europe is, that the Egge is nourished by a Toad, and not by a Snake; howbeit in better experience it found that the Cock doth sit on that Egge himself: whereof Serianus Semnius in his twelfth book of the Hidden Animals of Nature hath this discourse, in the fourth chapter thereof. 'There happened,' saith he, 'within our memory, in the city of Pirizæa, that there were two old Cocks which had laid Egges, and the common people (because of opinion that those Egges would engender Cockatrices) laboured by all meanes possible to keep the same Cocks from sitting on those Egges, but they could not with clubs and staves drive them from the Egges, until they were forced to break the Egges in sunder, and strangle the Cocks."

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