File:Scripture natural history- containing a description of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, amphibia, fishes, insects, molluscous animals, corals, plants, trees, precious stones, and metals, mentioned in the (14750659325).jpg

Identifier: scripturenatural00reli (find matches)
Title: Scripture natural history: containing a description of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, amphibia, fishes, insects, molluscous animals, corals, plants, trees, precious stones, and metals, mentioned in the Holy Scriptures
Year: 1845 (1840s)
Authors: Religious Tract Society (Great Britain) Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Board of Publication
Subjects: Nature in the Bible
Publisher: Philadelphia, Presbyterian board of publication
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ce, or the burning sensation occasion-ed by its bite. The latter is the most probable. It isalso called the fiery flying serpent, which probablyis intended to describe the swift darting motions ofthis animal. The celebrated traveller, Niebuhr, in-forms us, that there is, at Basra, a sort of serpentwhich is called heie sursuire, heie thiare. They com-monly keep upon the date trees; and, as it would be 12 122 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. laborious for them to come down from a very hightree, in order to ascend another, they twist themselvesby the tail to a branch of the former, which, makinga spring by the motion they give it, throws them tothe branches of the second. Hence it is that the mo-dern Arabs call them heie thicwe, flying serpents.5Serpent-worship, under one form or other, was oneof the most widely diffused forms of idolatry in theancient world. In Egypt, the cerastes, or hornedsnake, was sacred to Amnion, and was interred afterdeath in his temple. The aspic, or haje, was made an
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COBRA DI CAPELLO. emblem of Cneph, the protecting divinity of the world.They sculptured it on two sides of a globe, on the por-tico of all their temples. The hooded snake (cobra di SERPENTS. 123 capello) makes a conspicuous appearance on the sculp-tures at Ellora, Salsette, and Elephanta. A large ser-pent of the boa tribe is also worshipped in the king-dom of Dahomey, and regarded with veneration inother parts of Africa. In Psal. lviii. 6, we read of the voice of the serpent-charmers, a class of persons still found in Africa andIndia. Eusebius mentions that Palestine abounded,in his time, with them, and that they usually employ-ed a verbal charm. This is still one of the processesof the serpent-charmers in India and Egypt. Thepractice is alluded to in Eccles. x. 11, and Jer. viii. 17;but it was expressly forbidden by the Mosaic law, There shall not be found among you a charmer.Deut. xviii. 11. Hasselqnist gives the following ac-count of a female Egyptian serpent-charmer, whomhe met wi

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