"There is a religious sect in Africa, not far from Algiers, which eat the most venomous serpents _alive_; and certainly, it is said, without extracting their fangs. They declare they enjoy the privilege from their founder. The creatures writhe and struggle between their teeth; but possibly, if they do bite them, the bite is innocuous." Mrs. Crowe, in the concluding chapter of her _Night-side of Nature_, gives the testimony of an eye-witness to "the singular phenomenon to be observed by placing a scorpion and a mouse together under a glass." "It is known that _stags renew their age by eating serpents_; so the phoenix is restored by the nest of spices she makes to burn in. The pelican hath the same virtue, whose right foot, if it be put under hot dung, after three months a pelican will be bred from it. Wherefore some physicians, with some confections made of _a viper_ and hellebore, and of some of the flesh of these creatures, _do promise to restore youth, and sometimes they do it_."[7] On reading any of our old herbalists, one would imagine that serpents (and those of the worst kind) abounded in "Merrie Englande," and that they were the greatest bane of our lives. It is {40} hard to stumble on a plant that is not an antidote to the bite of serpents. Our old herbals were compiled, however, almost entirely from the writings of the ancients, and from foreign sources. The ancients had a curious notion relative to the plant Basil (_Oscimum basilicum_), viz., "That there is a property in Basil to propagate scorpions, and that the smell thereof they are bred in the brains of men." Others deny this wonderful property, and make Basil a simple antidote. "According unto Oribasius, physician unto Julian, the Africans, men best experienced in poisons, affirm, whosoever hath eaten Basil, although he be stung with a scorpion, shall feel no pain thereby, which is a very different effect, and rather antidotally destroying than seminally promoting its production."--Sir Thomas Browne, _Vulgar Errors._ An old writer gives the following anecdote in point: "Francis Marcio, an eminent statesman of Genoa, having sent an ambassador from that republic to the Duke of Milan, when he could neither procure an audience of leave from that prince, nor yet prevail with him to ratify his promises made to the Genoese, taking a fit opportunity, presented a handful of the herb Basil to the duke. The duke, somewhat surprised, asked what that meant? 'Sir,' replied the ambassador, 'this herb is of that nature, that if you handle it gently without squeezing, it will emit a pleasant and grateful scent; but if you squeeze and gripe it, 'twill not only lose its colour, but it _will become productive of scorpions_ in a little time."--_The Entertainer_: London, 1717, p. 23.