paunch, and make the best of three legs to escape, the fourth being already disposed of, and digested in the body of the serpent. The solitary Coluber Atro-virens passed next in review. She gave him a character for preferring good cheer to the best company, _ex gr._--Out of two taken last week, one only survived; the other devoured his friend in the night, and next morning they found his enormously distended body dilated almost to transparency, and palpitating under the feeble movement of the victim, doubled up in his inside, but not yet dead. Being very exclusive, some call him "_il milordo_;" others, from the beauty of his colour, _"il bello."_ When about to moult, his wonted vivacity changes to moroseness. Like a mad dog, he will snap at every thing. Perhaps the loss of all his beauty, which then takes place, may account for such peevishness. A glaucomatous state of the eye always precedes by some days the moult, which is accomplished by the skin cracking from the jaws, and afterwards being reflected over the head and shoulders, till by degrees the snake skins himself alive, leaving his old investment turned completely inside out. As gross a feeder as an alderman, he more frequently recovers from a surfeit, perhaps because, though a glutton, he will not touch wine. Snakes are not so plentiful about Rome as farther south. Terracina in particular swarms with them, as did its ancient predecessor _Amycle_, which was once nearly depopulated by them. Their chief haunt hereabouts is two miles beyond the Porta Salara, at a place called Serpentina, on the opposite side of the Tiber, and nearly in front of the embouchure of the Cremara. At last we come to the family viper box, which perhaps we "would like to peep into with our gloves on?" "_Per Carita_, no," said we seizing the naturalista's hand--"on no account--a bite would be no joke!" Cadet laughed, observing that curiosity should not be baulked by timidity for a trifle.--"A trifle! had she ever been bitten, then?" "_Come? sicuro ogni anno._" It was of familiar occurrence: the part would swell, be stiff and sore for a couple of days, but that was all. Fontana found that it required four large and very angry vipers to kill a dog--of course it must require as many to kill a man. As to the Egyptian Queen's death being caused by a viper's bite, that question having been properly _ventilated_ (ventillata) by Professor Lancisci, might be considered as set at rest. One viper could not kill one person, much less _three_; and we might remember that Cleopatra's memorable asp is said to have bitten two maids of honour, Neæra and Carmione, before it came to her turn, by which time the poison must have been expended and the viper's tooth dry. "Two things," added she, "I have noted about vipers; one regards the parturient viper, and is to the effect that, a prisoner, she never survives her confinement many days; long before the _quarante jours y compris