Serpentum et Draconum Historiae

are said to attain, because no one dares to set traps for them: since it has been ordained by royal decree that no one should offend these beasts. For he who destroys a Serpent is punished with a death no less bitter than if he had killed a man. Therefore, no one hereafter shall mock Aelian, who writes that in the New World of Seneca, Serpents open their jaws so wide that they can swallow goats whole, nay, even bulls, as Textor has reported. Whoever desires to understand more about great Serpents should consult Diodorus, Lucan, and Strabo, who recount almost incredible things about them.

Bk. 2, Aeneid.

Perhaps those Serpents were of this kind that destroyed Laocoön together with his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus; and therefore Virgil, not without reason, called these snakes "of immense coils." In the third part of the history of Portuguese India, it is read that there, not far from the sea, vast Serpents are found, living almost always in rivers, the magnitude of which must be judged by their food, since they are said to devour stags whole.

Regarding the color, which one may observe on serpentine skin: first, it is to be noted that the skin of snakes is partly smooth, partly rough. Indeed, according to the chapter of St. Augustine, a Serpent is observed which the Spaniards call, from its sound, Cascauella, as if it were a little bell;
Bk. 7, de rer. var., ch. 29.

and Cardan opines that this sound arises because the skin is armored with hard and mobile scales: since it is likely that very large Serpents, fortified with hard scales as if by so many shields, emit no light noise by shaking their skin in motion. Furthermore, they inspire great admiration in those who view them because of the diversity of their colors, as they have skin filled with black, white, gray, red, and distinct spotted colors. In the northern region, some Serpents of this kind roam, distinguished by various colors; but a greater abundance of these, according to Aelian, is generated in India. For they are conspicuous with stripes extending from the head to
Bk. 17, ch. 2.

the tail—some bronze, some golden, some silver—and they kill very quickly with a pestiferous bite. Likewise, André Thevet recounts in the island called the Island of Mice, most beautifully colored snakes: for he enumerates some that are reddish, with multi-colored scales; others just green like the leaves of a laurel. Green Serpents are named Sauritae by Hesychius, perhaps because they are likened to the green lizard, which is called σαυρὸς? by the Greeks. Snakes of this kind also dwell among the Valesians, which they nickname Grunling from their color, but Gesner understood them to be extremely venomous. Finally, Nicander writes that the colors of Serpents vary according to the diversity of places: on account of this, it is commonly held from Pliny that most Serpents are adorned with the color of that soil under which they hide every year.

Bk. 2, ch. 14.

Concerning the differences taken from place, Aristotle must be consulted, who, in his History of Animals, after having examined the nature of fish, reduces Serpents to sanguineous animals,
Differences of Serpents based on place.

and distributes them into terrestrial and aquatic, and then teaches that the greatest part of these are terrestrial, while a small part is aquatic—that is to say, inhabitants of the river. He also posits that there are Serpents indigenous to the sea, which dwell not in the deepest abysses, but in places not very deep: concerning whose nature and species, much has been treated in the History of Fish.
Bk. 3, ch. 24.

Finally, various species of terrestrial ones are assigned: since some delight in flat places, others in mountainous ones; others dwell willingly in holes and along the roots of beeches and oaks, like the Drynus. Others love salty soil, like the Dipsas. Others, finally, are of a dual nature, like the Chersydrus, which inhabits partly watery places, partly arid ones: and therefore, Serpents of this
Bk. 2, obser., ch. 4.

kind are to be called amphibious. To this point, Belon narrates that he observed in the harbor of Abydos a certain kind of Serpent living in the sea by day, and moving toward the mainland at night for the sake of rest; the red color of whose skin shone on a grayish background.

The odor among these distinctions of Serpents is not to be disregarded; since there are among Serpents those which are known as musky from their odor, just like the Serpent of Aesculapius, which
Differences based on odor.

is called bissa angela by the Bolognese, and is of two kinds, as will be explained in its proper place. There also dwells in Cyprus a Serpent which the inhabitants indicate as Cuffo in their own idiom (there are those who call it a deaf asp, because it is observed to be deaf for one month, and blind for another); this animal is venomous with a large head and a boneless body, and when it has caught a lamb, it devours it whole, then seeks a tree, against which it rubs its body until it crushes the devoured bones; this one, therefore, when it dies, breathes forth a pleasing odor of musk.

If we contemplate the harm that is accustomed to flow from beasts of this kind, we shall distribute Serpents into harmful and harmless. Concerning the harmless, we read in Aelian that large Serpents dwell in the island of Hispaniola, but they are so tame that they bring no harm to men.
Bk. 9, ch. 10.

Others are generated in India, to which nature has granted no power of biting,