ke any long discourse of venomous beasts or
worms bred in England, I should attempt more than occasion itself would
readily offer, sith we have very few worms, but no beasts at all, that are
thought by their natural qualities to be either venomous or hurtful. First
of all, therefore, we have the adder (in our old Saxon tongue called an
atter), which some men do not rashly take to be the viper. Certes, if it
be so, then is not the viper author of the death of her[189] parents, as
some histories affirm, and thereto Encelius, a late writer, in his _De re
Metallica_, lib. 3, cap. 38, where he maketh mention of a she adder which
he saw in Sala, whose womb (as he saith) was eaten out after a like
fashion, her young ones lying by her in the sunshine, as if they had been
earthworms. Nevertheless, as he nameth them _viperas_, so he calleth the
male _echis_, and the female _echidna_, concluding in the end that _echis_
is the same serpent which his countrymen to this day call _ein atter_, as
I have also noted before out of a Saxon dictionary. For my part I am
persuaded that the slaughter of their parents is either not true at all,
or not always (although I doubt not but that nature hath right well
provided to inhibit their superfluous increase by some means or other),
and so much the rather am I led hereunto for that I gather by Nicander
that of all venomous worms the viper only bringeth out her young alive,
and therefore is called in Latin _vipera quasivivipara_, but of her own
death he doth not (to my remembrance) say anything. It is testified also
by other in other words, and to the like sense, that "_Echis id est vipera
sola ex serpentibus non ava sed animalia parit_." And it may well be, for
I remember that I have read in Philostratus, _De vita Appollonii_, how he
saw a viper licking her young. I did see an adder once myself that lay (as
I thought) sleeping on a molehill, out of whose mouth came eleven young
adders of twelve or thirteen inches in length apiece, which played to and
fro in the grass one with another, till some of them espied me. So soon
therefore as they saw my face they ran again into the mouth of their dam,
whom I killed, and then found each of them shrouded in a distinct cell or
pannicle in her belly, much like unto a soft white jelly, which maketh me
to be of the opinion that our adder is the viper indeed. The colour of
their skin is for the most part like rusty iron or iron grey, but such as
be very old resem