File:Reptiles and birds - a popular account of the various orders; with a description of the habits and economy of the most interesting (1869) (14745580001).jpg

Identifier: reptilesbirdspop00figu (find matches)
Title: Reptiles and birds : a popular account of the various orders; with a description of the habits and economy of the most interesting
Year: 1869 (1860s)
Authors: Figuier, Louis, 1819-1894 Gillmore, Parker
Subjects: Birds Reptiles
Publisher: Springfield, Mass. : W.J. Holland
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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when under the influence of passion and irritation the neckswells at the same time that the animal raises the front part of hisbody vertically, holding this part straight and rigid as aniron bar. The lower part of the body rests iipon the ground, andserves as a support to the upper part, which is movable and capableof locomotion. This faculty of dilating the neck is as striking a traitn the organization of the Cobras, as the rattle is in Crotalus.The ancient inhabitants of Egypt adored them ; they attributedto their protection the preservation of grain, and allowed them tolive in the midst of their cultivated fields. The Cobra is no long-eran object of adoration in the East, but is held sacred by manypeople, and it serves in nearly every country of Asia as a very * Pliny, remarks Sir J. E. Tennent, notices the affection that subsists betweenthe male and female Asp (or African Cobra); and that if one of them happens to bekilled, the other-seeks to avenge its death —lib. ^^ii. c. 37.
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iig. ii.—Suiike-cUarmers. 74 OPHIDIAN EEPTILES. curious spectacle; being the Serpent chiefly used by snake-charmers in these covmtries, terrible as it seems to us. The action of the snake-charmer is as follows : he takes in hishand a root, the virtue of which is supposed to preserve him fromthe venemous effects of the bite of the Cobra. Drawing thereptile from the cage in which he keeps it confined, he irritatesit by presenting a stick to it; the animal immediately erectsthe fore part of its body, swells its neck, opens its jaws, ex-tends its forked tongue, its eyes glitter, and it begins to hiss.Then a sort of battle commences between the Serpent and the

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