Of all creatures the serpent exercised, in the most curious manner, the invention of the Druids. To the famous _anguinum_ they attributed high virtues. The _anguinum_ or serpent's egg, was a congeries of small snakes rolled together, and incrusted with a shell, formed by the saliva or viscous gum, or froth of the mother serpent. This egg, it seems was tossed into the air, by the hissings of its dam, and before it fell again to the earth (where it would be defiled) it was to be received in the sagus or sacred vestment. The person who caught the egg was to make his escape on horseback, since the serpent pursues the ravisher of its young, even to the brink of the next river. Pliny, from whom this account is taken (lib. 29. C. 3.) proceeds with an enumeration of other absurdities relating to the anguinum. This _anguinum_ is in British called _Glain-neider_, or the serpent of glass; and the same superstitious reverence which the Danmonii universally paid to the anguinum, is still discoverable in some parts of Cornwall. Mr. Llhuyd informs us that "the Cornish retain a variety of charms, and have still towards the Land's-End, the amulets of Maen-Magal and Glain-neider, which latter they call _Melprer_, and have a charm for the snake to make it, when they find one asleep, and stick a hazel wand in the centre of her spirae," or coils. We are informed by Cambden that, "in most parts of Wales, and throughout all Scotland and Cornwall, it is an opinion of the vulgar, that about midsummer-eve (though in the time they do not all agree) the snakes meet in companies, and that by joining heads together and hissing, a kind of bubble is formed, which the rest, by continual hissing, blow on till it passes quite through the body, when it immediately hardens, and resembles a glass-ring, which whoever finds shall prosper in all his undertakings. The rings thus generated are called _Gleiner-nadroeth_, or snake-stones. They are small glass amulets, commonly about half as wide as our finger rings, but much thicker, of a green colour usually, though sometimes blue, and waved with red and white." Carew says, that "the country people, in Cornwall, have a persuasion that the snake's breathing upon a hazel wand produces a stone ring of blue colour, in which there appears the yellow figure of a snake, and that beasts bit and envenomed, being given some water to drink wherein this stone has been infused, will perfectly recover the poison."[29]