History of Serpents and Dragons, Book I.

Some serpents are harmless. Chapter 96.

A This occurs because they lack teeth. Likewise, it is held in the first part of the Chronicles of Peru Referring to the work of Pedro Cieza de León that in the mountains of the city of Cuzco, immense and harmless serpents roam about. They give this explanation for the matter: namely, that when many leaders once went out to the mountains with an army by order of the Inca King original: "Yugæ Regis"; likely referring to the Sapa Inca to subjugate them, the serpents inhabiting the mountains killed the greater part of the army. Whereupon a certain old woman promised the King that she was willing to lull such serpents to sleep with songs, so that the leaders along with the soldiers might be able to pass through there harmlessly. This having been done, those serpents were rendered harmless thereafter. We consider this to be a figment or a fable. Nicander A Greek poet and physician from the 2nd century BCE also, in his Theriaca A poem on venomous creatures, places the moluri among the harmless serpents in these verses:

Many of the reptiles, which are not so harmful in form,
Live through the dense forests and through the dark thickets,
Which they call Elopes, and Libyans, and the crowned Myagri,
They are distinguished through the ages, and they are the moluri,
They are blind; and a crowd that knows not how to harm.
original Latin verse: "Plures reptilium, quæ non ita noxia formæ..." translated from Nicander’s Greek

What serpents the Moluri are.

B Lonicer Adam Lonicer, a 16th-century German botanist and physician interprets these serpents as walking as if on their tails, and more about these is not read among authors. For moluris original Greek: μολυρὶς is an ambiguous word: for the commentator on Nicander writes that the molurides are similar to locusts; Hermolaus Hermolao Barbaro, an Italian scholar notes the same in his Corollary on Locusts. Aristophanes, however, calls a little beast born among millstones by this name. Otherwise, according to Hesychius, a moluris is "one who sees with difficulty" original Greek: μόλις ὁρῶν (molis horon), rendering it as "scarcely seeing." The rest of the serpents are believed to be pestilential on account of their poison; in sex, the males have more poison, although some learned men judge the females to be worse than the males. The old overflow with a greater abundance of poison than the young. Furthermore, the large are said to be more venomous than the small (provided the discussion is about the same species). Moreover, the hungry are more so than the sated. Likewise, the angry become both bolder and more venomous. There are also those who infect by their breath alone: for Pomponius Mela A Roman geographer records that around the Rhyndacus river bordering Bithynia, immense snakes are produced which quite often gape while sunning themselves, and infect birds flying over with their breath, which they afterwards swallow as they fall.
The breath of snakes killing birds.

Book 16, chapter 62.

C For we shall find a difference in the eyes of snakes: since some have very large eyes, like the serpents of Libya; others small, and similar to locusts; others are filled with eyes suffused with a blood-red or yellow color; some, finally, see most sharply, others are of dull vision. The mouth also distinguishes snakes among themselves: since the Seps A small venomous snake often associated with rot and the sea serpent are gifted with a sharp mouth; the Parus has a wide mouth; but the Libyan serpent displays a vast one. Some are decorated with a cone on the top of the head like a little crest: whence Aelian Claudius Aelianus, a 3rd-century Roman naturalist wrote that just as the stag surpasses the doe in horns, and the lion excels the lioness in his mane, and the male of the cicadas in his voice, so the male serpent is distinguished from the females by being adorned with a crest—although it is established afterwards that this does not reach the truth in all species. This much is true: that some serpents were gifted by nature with horns: since in the asp, two callous tubercles are seen above the eyes, which create a larger cavity in the eyes. Others have only one horn, like the one-horned viper original: "vipera monoceros", which is produced in Istria; the Cerastes bears two horns, others carry fourfold ones: for this reason, the teaching of Albertus Albertus Magnus, a medieval scholar is not to be rejected, where he enumerates one-horned, two-horned, three-horned, and many-horned serpents. Moreover, it must be noted
Some of the serpents have horns.

D that the horns of serpents appear not hard and horny, but rather fleshy, or some kind of callous eminences. Therefore Vitriacus James of Vitry, a historian of the Crusades, in his History of the East, mentions serpents armed with horns like a ram, with which, moved like a fan, they strike men. Nor should the winged snakes be passed over, which are bred on the mountain dividing the Kingdom of Senegal from the Malabars Likely referring to disparate geographic regions grouped by early modern accounts. These kill men approaching nearer by their breath alone, or even by their gaze. Lastly, if we investigate the final species, Nicander, as reported by Lonicer, enumerates two-and-twenty species of snakes. These are the Viper, Asp, Cerastes, Hemorrhous, Sepedon, Dipsas, Chusydrus, Amphisbaena, Scytale, Basilisk, Drynus (or Chelydrus, or Hydrus), Dragon, Cenchrynes, Ascalabus, Elopes, Libyans, Crowned Myagri, Acontia, Typhlopes, and Moluri.

A decorative horizontal woodcut border featuring repeating floral and scrollwork patterns.