At first reading this passage, I confess I thought it irony. As to what regards the cataract, one of the articles Dr Johnson has condescended upon as truth, I had already spoken, while composing these memoirs in Abyssinia, long before this new publication saw the light; and, upon a cool revisal of the whole that I have said, I cannot think of receding from any part of it, and therefore recommend it to the reader’s perusal. What we have now only to note, is the fidelity of Jerome Lobo, so strongly vouched in the words I have just cited, in the article of basilisks, or serpents, which Dr Johnson has chosen as one of the instances of his author’s adhering to fact, contrary to the custom of other writers on such subjects. “In crossing a desert, which was two days journey over, I was in great danger of my life; for, as I lay on the ground, I perceived myself seized with a pain which forced me to rise, and saw, about four yards from me, one of those serpents that _dart their poison from a distance_. Although I rose before he came very near me, I yet felt the effects of his poisonous breath; and, if I had lain a little longer, had certainly died. I had recourse to bezoar, a sovereign remedy against those poisons, which I always carried about me. These serpents are not long, but have a body short and thick, their bellies speckled with brown, black, and yellow. They have a wide mouth, with which they draw in a great quantity of air, and, having retained it some time, eject it with such force, that they kill at four yards distance. I only escaped by being somewhat farther from him.” (Chap. xii. p. 124.) Now, as this is warranted, by one of such authority as Dr Johnson, to be neither imagination nor falsehood, we must think it a new system of natural philosophy, and consider it as such; and, in the first place, I would wish to know from the author, who seems perfectly informed, what species of serpent it is that he has quoted as darting their poison at a distance. Again, what species it is that, at the distance of 12 feet, kills a man by breathing on his back; also, what they call that species of serpent that, drawing in the same outward air which Jerome Lobo breathed, could so far pervert its quality as with it to kill at the distance of four yards. Surely such a serpent, if he had no other characteristic in the world, would be described by a naturalist as the serpent with the foul stomach.--I never saw a poisonous serpent in Abyssinia whose belly is not white; so this one being speckled, brown, black, and yellow, will be a direction when any such is found, and serve as a warning not to come near him, at least within the distance of four yards.