Serpentum et Draconum Historiae

Afterward, the liver, resembling the liver of a pike, was extended in length. Then the intestines were filled with white fat, which proceeded from the throat all the way to the anus in the manner of the intestines of fish. Below the liver on both sides, next to the intestines, a vein full of nerves descended in a long duct, to which eggs in white membranes adhered in a straight line, as may be seen in hens, but distinct in placement, because they are led in a long row. The number on either side was thirty-two eggs; therefore, by reason of the heart, lung, and trachea, the serpent is greatly assimilated to birds. By reason of the liver, intestines, and abdomen, the serpent agrees with fish. Yet afterward, by reason of the gall bladder and the arrangement of the eggs, the serpent differs from both, namely from birds as well as from fish.

NATURE AND HABITS.

F

IT is innate to serpents by nature that they show a certain alacrity of the senses among other living creatures, wherefore it is read in Genesis: Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the earth. From this perhaps their implacable fury proceeds; for as soon as they feel even some light injury, they do not rest at all until they have either injected poison into the one harming them or have been killed by rage, for which reason the divine scriptures show an implacable fury through the serpent, implicated in many coils and flashing with three-forked tongues. It is read in the fifty-eighth Psalm: Their fury is like the fury of a serpent, because they always have poison ready, since it lies hidden under the teeth.

Where the poison lies hidden.

Although some write that the poison lies in the tail of the serpent and that it is subsequently brought into a certain bladder adhering to the mouth, which being ruptured, snakes are said to lack poison—but in a short space of a natural day, the poison proceeds again to fill the bladder—so that they may infect other animals, and especially man, who having been struck, according to the mind of Pliny, the serpent thereafter hates its own caverns, and thus wandering, pays the penalty. To this point, the Indians, as Aelian reports, assert that the serpent cannot enter its lair because the earth casts it out from its own bosom as if into exile: whence in summer and winter time it spends a miserable existence in the open air. When, however, at the beginning of the created world, nothing harmful was to be found in the serpent, but it went forth mild, gentle, and tall, about to obey man before it fell into sin, as Basil notes: nor without reason, since all things that God had created were very good, as the Sacred Page teaches.

G

In the sermon on Paradise.

Book 1 of Genesis.

Furthermore, snakes have this implanted by nature, that as winter approaches, just like other animals of a cold temperature, they betake themselves to caverns until the Sun, warming the air again, restores to them a new life, as it were. Aristotle, therefore, did not write without reason that for the four coldest months, serpents lie hidden and eat nothing, at which time, because of the chill of the air, they possess less poison and are handled with impunity, not because they lack poison entirely, but they are sluggish, since the enormity of the cold numbs their strengths and spirits.

Book 16 of the History of Spain.

That they are, however, impatient of cold is proven by the most beautiful history of Lucius Marineus Siculus, where these words are read: For a horrid winter was raging with great and continuous rains; for the magnitude of that winter was so great that a huge number of serpents, driven by the cold, having departed from the nearby woods and mountains, crept to the stations and camps. Conversely, in summer, and especially when the dog-star is pressing, serpents are vehemently heated and seem to be so agitated by a certain fury that, as Galen testifies, they can rest for only a very small moment of time.

H

Book 2 on affected locations.

Book 8, chapter 17.

But at the beginning of Spring, the snake emerging from its lairs sheds its old slough, which some call syphar, others senium or old age, and others, according to the mind of Pliny, vernation. Aristotle taught all of this in his History of Animals, namely that serpents, when they shed their old age, first begin from the head, so that the falling slough seems in a certain way to blind them, but at last, in the space of a natural day, the whole spoil is removed from head to tail, in the manner in which a fetus is freed from the membranes of its covering. Then, having tasted fennel, as Nicander wished, the young serpent appears to human sight. Reusner hints at this in his Poetic Paradise when he sings:

Fennel is pleasing to the serpent.

The snake itself casts off its old age with its skins,
And renews its face with vigorous bloom.

Again, he sings the same in these verses.