es--but a living snake wound round living temples we
had never seen till to-day. "Come, sir, you are only the _snake_ to
Esculapius; and though I am not ungrateful for what you have done in
refreshing my hot forehead with your cool skin, now the _doctor_ is come,
_bon giorno_!" and, removing him like a turban from her head, she placed
him in a box at her side. This was, then, that Epidaurian Coluber which we
had so frequently seen in marble effigy wound round the consultation cane
of the God of Physic,[6] and not to be viewed by us alive for the first
time without interest. "Mother," said the younger Cadet, brightening up
when she perceived this, "bring our snake-boxes, and let us show them all
to the _dottore_." In less than five minutes the cases were before us. The
first contained a mother blind-worm and her viviparous family of ten
offspring, not two inches long, while she stretched to about twelve. A
Coluber Natrix inhabited the second. "He is a great favourite with
children in Sardinia," said Cadet, "twisting himself round their arms, and
sucking milk from their mouths; but if these supplies fail, he feeds on
frogs and fish. His flesh is a sovereign remedy, say our doctors, in skin
diseases; and they also say--but you know best how true this may be--that
one of the late Dukes of Bavaria became a father by merely eating fowls
that had been fattened on them." A Coluber Austriacus followed--a rare
snake, and chiefly remarkable for his pleasant herbaceous smell, very
unlike what proceeded from a neighbouring box, holding a Coluber
Viperinus, who secretes, when irritated, a yellow fluid of intense
foetor, like the mixed stinks from asafoetida and rotten eggs. The
specimen in this box was large. It had vomited, we were told, two frogs
the day after its capture; and on cutting open another of the same
species, Annetta had seen a living toad creep, Jonas-like, from the
paunch, and make the best of three legs to escape, the fourth being
already disposed of, and digested in the body of the serpent. The solitary
Coluber Atro-virens passed next in review. She gave him a character for
preferring good cheer to the best company, _ex gr._--Out of two taken last
week, one only survived; the other devoured his friend in the night, and
next morning they found his enormously distended body dilated almost to
transparency, and palpitating under the feeble movement of the victim,
doubled up in his inside, but not yet dead. Being very exclu