HKB
which a cobra learns this lesson is extraordinary, the charmers being as willing to show their mastery over newly-caught Serpents as over those which have been long in their possession.
The colour of the Cobra is in most cases a brownish olive. The most noted peculiarity is the expansion of the neck, popularly called the hood. This phenomenon is attributable not only to the skin and muscles, but to the skeleton. About twenty pairs of the ribs of the neck and fore part of the back are flat instead of curved, and increase gradually from the head to the eleventh or twelfth pair, from which they decrease until they are merged into the ordinary curved ribs of the body. When the snake is excited, it brings these ribs forward so as to spread the skin, and then displays the oval hood to best advantage.
In the Cobra di Capello the back of the hood is ornamented by two large eye-like spots, united by a curved black stripe, so formed that the whole mark bears a singular resemblance to a pair of spectacles.
THE CERASTES, OR SHEPHIPHON OF SCRIPTURE.
The word shephiphon, which evidently signifies some species of snake, only occurs once in the Scriptures, but fortunately that single passage contains an allusion to the habits of the serpent which makes identification nearly certain. The passage in question occurs in Gen. xlix. 17, and forms part of the prophecy of Jacob respecting his children: "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."
Putting aside the deeper meaning of this prophecy, there is here an evident allusion to the habits of the CERASTES, or HORNED VIPER, a species of venomous serpent, which is plentiful in Northern Africa, and is found also in Palestine and Syria. It is a very conspicuous reptile, and is easily recognised by the two horn-like projections over the eyes. The name Cerastes, or horned, has been given to it on account of these projections.
This snake has a custom of lying half buried in the sand, awaiting the approach of some animal on which it can feed. Its usual diet consists of the jerboas and other small mammalia, and as they are exceedingly active, while the Cerastes is slow and sluggish, its only chance of obtaining food is to lie in wait. It will always take advantage of any small depression, such as the print of a camel's foot, and, as it finds many of these depressions in the line of the caravans, it is literally "a serpent by the way, an adder in the path."
According to the accounts of travellers, the Cerastes is much more irritable than the cobra, and is very apt to strike at any object which may disturb it. Therefore, whenever a horseman passes along the usual route, his steed is very likely to disturb a Cerastes lying in the path, and to be liable to the attack of the irritated reptile. Horses are instinctively aware of the presence of the snake, and mostly perceive it in time to avoid its stroke. Its small dimensions, the snake rarely exceeding two feet in length, enable it to conceal itself in a very small hollow, and its brownish-white colour, diversified with darker spots, causes it to harmonize so thoroughly with the loose sand in which it lies buried, that, even when it is pointed out, an unpractised eye does not readily perceive it.
Even the cobra is scarcely so dreaded as this little snake, whose bite is so deadly, and whose habits are such as to cause travellers considerable risk of being bitten.