“I certify that I have many times killed serpents by moistening in a slight degree, with my spittle, a stick or a stone, and giving them a slight blow on the middle of the body, scarcely sufficient to produce a small contusion. January 19, 1757. Figuier, Surgeon.”

The above surgeon having given me this certificate, two witnesses, who had seen him kill serpents in this manner, attested what they had beheld. Notwithstanding, I wished to behold the thing myself; for I confess that, in various parts of these queries, I have taken St. Thomas of Didymus for my patron saint, who always insisted on an examination with his own hands.

For eighteen hundred years this opinion has been perpetuated among the people, and it might possibly be even eighteen thousand years old, if Genesis had not supplied us with the precise date of our enmity to this reptile. It may be asserted that if Eve had spit on the serpent when he took his place at her ear, a world of evil would have been spared human nature.

Lucretius, in his fourth book, alludes to this manner of killing serpents as very well known:

Est utique ut serpens hominis contacta salivis.

Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa.

— Lib., iv, v. 642-643.

Spit on a serpent, and his vigor flies,

He straight devours himself, and quickly dies.

There is some slight contradiction in painting him at once deprived of vigor and self-devouring, but my surgeon Figuier asserts not that the serpents which he killed were self-devouring. Genesis says wisely that we kill them with our heels, and not with spittle.

We are in the midst of winter on January 19, which is the time when serpents visit us. I cannot find any at Mount Krapak; but I exhort all philosophers to spit upo............