HKB
visible spirit of a man, which visible spirit corrupted all the other spirits coming from the brain and life of the heart, are thereby corrupted, and so the man dyeth."
The subtle poison of the Cockatrice infected everything near it, so that a man who killed a Cockatrice with a spear fell dead himself, by reason of the poison darting up the shaft of the spear and passing into his hand. Any living thing near which the Cockatrice passed was instantly slain by the fiery heat of its venom, which was exhaled not only from its mouth, but its sides. For the old writers, whose statements are here summarized, contrived to jumble together a number of miscellaneous facts in natural history, and so to produce a most extraordinary series of legends.
I should not have given even this limited space to such puerile legends, but for the fact that such stories as these were fully believed in the days when the Authorized Version of the Bible was translated. The translators of the Bible believed most heartily in the mysterious and baleful reptile, and, as they saw that the Tsepha of Scripture was an exceptionally venomous serpent, they naturally rendered it by the word Cockatrice.
THE FROG.
The Frog only mentioned in the Old Testament as connected with the plagues of Egypt--The severity of this plague explained--The Frog detestable to the Egyptians--The Edible Frog and its numbers--Description of the species.
Plentiful as is the FROG throughout Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, it is very remarkable that in the whole of the canonical books of the Old Testament the word is only mentioned thrice, and each case in connexion with the same event.
In Exod. viii. we find that the second of the plagues which visited Egypt came out of the Nile, the sacred river, in the form of innumerable Frogs. The reader will probably remark, on perusing the consecutive account of these plagues, that the two first plagues were connected with that river, and that they were foreshadowed by the transformation of Aaron's rod.
When Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh to ask him to let the people go, Pharaoh demanded a miracle from them, as had been foretold. Following the divine command, Aaron threw down his rod, which was changed into a serpent.
Next, as was most appropriate, came a transformation wrought on the river by means of the same rod which had been transformed into a Serpent, the whole of the fresh-water throughout the land being turned into blood, and the fish dying and polluting the venerated river with their putrefying bodies. In Egypt, a partially rainless country, such a calamity as this was doubly terrible, as it at the same time desecrated the object of their worship, and menaced them with perishing by thirst.
The next plague had also its origin in the river, but extended far beyond the limits of its banks. The frogs, being unable to return to the contaminated stream wherein they had lived, spread themselves in all directions, so as to fulfil the words of the prediction: "If thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs:
"And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bed-chamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading-troughs" (or dough).