The largest serpents are the Black Snake, five feet long, and the Milk Snake, from five to six feet in length.

"The Serpent is a species of the Linnaean genus Anguis, the orveto of the French, and the blind worm of the English.

I mean that where the Serpent is describ as rolling forward in all his Pride, animated by the evil Spirit, and conducting Eve to her Destruction, while Adam was at too great a distance from her to give her his Assistance.

The three blows of his hammer had fallen on nothing less than a huge mountain, instead of a giant, and left three deep glens dinted into its surface; the drinking-horn, which he had undertaken to empty, was the sea itself, or an outlet of the sea, which he had perceptibly lowered; while the cat was in reality the Midgard Serpent, which enringed the world in its coils, and the toothless she-wrestler was Old Age!

[Note 14: As will be later seen, these so-called serpents are iguanas.

That Serpent is a sinister birth of time, The likeness of the light 'twould fain take on, But 'tis engendered from the poisonous slime Of hate, and greed, and darkness.

III A SERPENT OF OLD NILE Modern Cairo is an unkempt place.

In the cave house the creatures of the nightthe tigers and hyenas, the serpent and the old dragon of the dark; in the light are true men and women, and the clear-eyed angels.

As to how it has happened that the serpent, which, in some systems, is the emblem of the good spirit, is in others the emblem of the evil one, that is a topic which belongs to a more extensive enquiry.

Was it the man, Adam, or the woman, Eve?" "As I remember," said the commandant, "the serpent was the prime mover in that affair.

The other three sides of the hall, which is nearly square, are entirely devoted to the large wall cages, with fronts of stout plate glass, in single sheets, rising about 14 feet to the roof, in which the serpents are confinedthe huge pythons, anaconda, and boa constrictor, the poisonous cobras and rattlesnakes, and others well known to the visitors at these gardens.

It has been asserted and maintained by some Rabins, that the brazen serpent raised by Moses in the wilderness, for the destruction of the serpents that annoyed the Israelites, was properly a talisman.

The serpent was an asset.

Supposing that the serpent was a totem of one of the Tzendal clans, then the effort would be to show that their hero-god was of that totem; but how this is shown by his being proved a chivim is not obvious.

"From that instant," said Dante, "the serpents and I were friends; for one of them throttled him into silence, and another dashed his hands into a knot behind his back.