COMMENTARY. According to Nicander, the cenchrinus, called also the lion, has a body of varied size, and marked with punctated squamæ. Dioscorides and Actuarius give exactly the same account of this serpent as our author. Haly Abbas in like manner describes it as occasioning mortification and putridity of the part. (Theor. viii, 21.) Isidorus says of it, “Cenchris serpens in flexuosis qui semper iter rectum efficit. De quo Lucanus: Et semper recto lapsurus limite cenchris.” Sprengel conjectures that it is a variety of the coluber berus, or viper, which is highly probable. According to Belon, it is three palms long, of the thickness of the little finger; of a cinereous colour, with black spots. Aëtius makes it to be the same as the acontias, which there can be no doubt was the same as the jaculus of Lucan. Yet Lucan treats of the jaculus and cenchris separately. (Phars. ix.) SECT. XVIII.—ON THE CERASTES AND ASP. According to Galen, there are three kinds of asps: that called the land asp, the chelidonian, and the third the ptyas, which is the most pernicious of all; for, stretching its neck, and measuring a convenient distance, with great sagacity, it disgorges the poison into the body. This is said to be the kind of asp which Queen Cleopatra, when Augustus, having vanquished Antony, wished to seize on her, took and applied to her left breast, and being bitten by it she died very quickly. When a person is bitten by the cerastes the part becomes tumefied, with hardness and blisters, and from the bite there flows an ichor which is sometimes black and sometimes pale, and like leeks; the whole system becomes of a dark pale colour, with erection of the privy member, and mental alienation; then dimness of sight comes on, and they die at last convulsed, as in tetanus. When a person is bitten by an asp, the bite resembles the prick of a needle, being very small in appearance, and without tumefaction, and it discharges blood not copiously but in small quantity, and of a black colour. Straightway dimness of the eyes seizes them, and various pains all over the body, which are altogether slight, and not without enjoyment, supervene; wherefore Nicander has properly said, “and without suffering dies the man.” The colour is changed and becomes as green as grass, there is a gnawing pain at the orifice of the stomach, the forehead is constantly drawn upwards, the eyelids are moved insensibly as in sleep, and with these symptoms death cuts off the man before the third part of a day has passed over. In both these cases speedy amputation of the extremities averts the evil. Wherefore the bitten part is to be amputated without delay, if possible, or the flesh is to be cut off immediately down to the bone, in order that the poison may not pass through the parts which are bitten and the adjacent ones. Then what remains is to be seared by cauteries. For the poison of these, like that of the basilisk and bull’s blood, quickly coagulates the blood and