The may go as expeditiously as poffible, or fend to every place where he may have occafion.

The branches of the Kantufla ftand two and two upon the ftalk; the leaves are difpofed two and two likewife, without any fingle one at the point, whereas the branches bearing the leaves part from the ftalk at the immediate joining of them are two thick thorns placed perpendicular and parallel alter nately; but there are alfo fingle ones diftributed in all the interftices throughout the branch.

The male plant, which I fuppofe this to be, has a one-leaved perian thium, divided into five fegments, and this falls off with the flower. The flower is compofed of five peeals, in the middle of which rife ten Stamina or filaments, the outer row fhorter than thofe of the middle, with long ftigmata, having yellow farina upon them. The flowers grow in a branch, generally between three and four inches long, in a conical difpofition, that is, broader at the bafe than the point. The infide of the leaves are a vivid green, in the outfide much lighter. It grows in form of a bufh, with a multitude of fmall branches rifing immediately from the ground, and is generally feven or eight feet high. 1 faw it when in flower only, never when bearing fruit. It has a very trong fmell, refembling that of the fmall fcented flower called mignionet, fown in vases and boxes in windows, or rooms, where flowers are kept.

The wild animals, both birds and beafts, efpecially the Guinea-fowl, know how well it is qualified to protect them. In this fhelter, the hunter in vain could endeavour to molest them, were it not for a hardhaired dog, or terrier of the fmalleft fize, who being defended from the shorns by the roughness of his coat,

goes into the cover and brings them and the partridges alive one by one to his mafter.

HYANA.

[From the fame Work.] THERE are few animals, whofe history has paffed under the confi deration of naturalifts, that have given occafion to fo much confufion and equivocation as the Hyæna has done. It began very early among the ancients, and the moderns have fully contributed their share. Moft of the animals confounded with him are about fix times smaller than he is, and fome there are that do not even ufe their four legs, but only two. The want of a critical knowledge in the Arabic language, and of natural history at the fame time, has in fome meafure been the occa fion of this among the moderns.

I do not think there is any one that hath hitherto written of this animal who ever faw the thousandth part of them that I have. They were a plague in Abyffinia in every fituation, both in the city and in the field, and I think surpassed the sheep in number. Gondar was full of them from the time it turned dark till the dawn of day, feeking the dif ferent pieces of flaughtered carcafes which this cruel and unclean people expofe in the ftreets without burial, and who firmly believe that these animals are Falafua from the neighbouring mountains, transformed by magic, and come down to eat human flefl in the dark in fafety. Many a time in the night, when the king had kept me late in the palace, and it was not my duty to lie there, in going across the fquare from the king's houfe, not many hundred yards diftant, I have been apprehenfive they would bite me in the leg. They grunted in great numbers about me, though I was fur rounded with feveral armed men,

who

E my tent, refolving directly to rern, which immediately did, when perceived large blue eyes glaring me in the dark. I called upon y fervant with a light, and there as the hyena ftanding nigh the ead of the bed, with two or three rge bunches of candles in his mouth. To have fired at him I was in danger of breaking my quadrant or other urniture, and he feemed, by keep. ng the candles fteadily in his mouth, o with for no other prey at that ime. As his mouth was full, and e had no claws to tear with, I was not afraid of him, but with a pike truck him as near the heart as I could judge. It was not till then he hewed any fign of fiercenefs; but, upon feeling his wound, he let drop the candles, and endeavoured to run up the fhaft of the fpear to arrive at me, fo that, in felf-defence, I was obliged to draw out a piftol from my girdle and thoot him, and nearly at the fame time my fervant cleft his fkull with a battle-ax. In a word, the hyena was the plague of our Hives, the terror of our night-walks, the deftruction of our mules and affes, which above all others are his favourite food,

The hyena is known by two names in the east, Deeb and Dubbah, His proper name is Dubbah, and this is the name he goes by among the best Arabian naturalifts. In Abyffinia, Nubia, and part of Arabia, he is, both in writing and converfation, called Deeb, or Deep, either ending with a b or Pi and here the confufion begins, for though Dubbah is

hounds. Dubb is a bear, fo here is another confufion, and the bear is taken for the hyena, because Dubb or Dubbah, feems to be the fame word. So Poncet, on the frontiers of Sennaar, complains, that one of his mules was bit in the thigh by a bear, though it is well known there never was any animal of the bear kind in that, or, I believe, in any other part of Africa. And I ftrongly apprehend, that the leopards and tigers, which Alvarez and Don Roderigo de Lima mention molested them fo much in their journey to Shoa, were nothing else but hyenas. For tigers there are certainly none in Abyffinia; it is an Afiatic animal Though there are leopards, yet they are but few in number, and are not gregarious; neither, indeed, are the hyenas, only as they gather in flocks, lured by the fmell of their food; and of these it would feem there are many in Shoa, for the capital of that province, called Te gulat, means the City of the Hy æna.

The hyena about Mount Liba nus, Syria, the north of Afia, and alfo about Algiers, is known to live for the most part upon large fuccu lent, bulbous roots, especially thofe of the fritillaria, and fuch large, fleshy, vegetable fubftances. I have known large fpaces of fields turned up to get at onions or roots of those plants, and thefe were chofen with fuch care, that, after having been peeled, they have been refufed and left on the ground for a small rotten fpot being difcovered in them. It

claws either for feizing or feparating animal food, that he might feed upon it, and I therefore imagine his primitive manner of living was rather upon vegetables than upon flesh, as it is certain he ftill continues his liking to the former; and I appre hend it is from an opportunity offer ing in a hungry time that he has ventured either upon man or beast, for few carnivorous animals, fuch as lions, tigers, and wolves, ever feed upon both.

3

In Barbary, then, he has no cou rage by day; he flies from man, and hides himself from him but in Abyffinia or Atbara, accuftomed to man's flesh, he walks boldly in the day-time like a horfe or mule, attacks man wherever he finds him, whether armed or unarmed, always attaching himself to the mule or afs in preference to the rider. I may fafely fay, I fpeak within bounds, that, I have fought him above fifty times hand to hand, with a lance or fpear, when I had fallen unexpectedly upon him among the tents, or in defence of my fervants or beafts. No dog, however fierce, will touch him in the field. My greyhounds, accustomed to faften upon the wild boar, would not venture to engage

with him. On the contrary, there was not a journey I made that he did not kill feveral of my greyhounds, and once or twice robbed me of my whole flock: he would feek and feize them in the fervants tents where they were tied, and endeavour to carry them away before the very people that were guarding them.

This animofity between him and dogs, though it has escaped modern naturalifts, appears to have been known to the ancients in the east, In Ecclefiafticus (chap. xiii. ver. 18.) it is faid, "What agreement is there between the hyena and the dog?" a fufficient proof that the antipathy was fo well known as to be proverbial.

Mr. Bruce is decidedly of opi nion, that the faphan is not the hy na, as Greek commentators upon the fcripture have imagined.

THE CERASTES.

[From the fame Work.] THE Ceraftes inhabits the great eft part of the eastern continent, especially the defert fandy parts of it. It abounds in Syria, in the three Arabias, and in Africa. I never faw fo many of them as in the Cyrenaicum, where the Jerboa is frequent in proportion. He is a great lover of heat; for though the fun was burning hot all day, when we made a fire at night, by digging a hole, and burning wood to charcoal in it, for dreffing our victuals, it was feldom we had fewer than half a dozen of thefe vipers, who burnt themselves to death approach ing the embers.

I apprehend this to be the afpic which Cleopatra employed to procure her death. Alexandria, plentifully fupplied by water, muft then have had fruit of all kinds in its gardens. The baskets of figs must have come from thence, and the afpic, or Ceraftes, that was hid in them,

from

from the adjoining defert, where there are plenty to this day; for to the weltward in Egypt, where the Nile overflows, there is no fort of ferpent whatever that I ever faw; nor, as I have before faid, is there any other of the mortal kind that I know in thofe parts of Africa adjoin. ing to Egypt, excepting the Ce,

raftes.

It should feem very natural for any one, who, from motives of dif, trefs, has refolved to put a period to his existence, efpecially women and weak perfons unaccustomed to handle arms, to feek the gentleft method to free themselves from that load of life now become infupportable. This, however, has not always been the cafe with the ancients. Aria, Petus's wife, ftabbed herself with a dagger, to fet her husband an example to die, with this memorable affurance, after giving herself the blow, Petus, it is not painful!" Porcia, the wife of Brutus, died by the barbarous, and not obvious way of perishing, by fwallowing fire; the violent agitation of fpirits prevailing over the momentary difference in the fuffering. It is not to be doubted but that a woman, highfpirited like Cleopatra, was alfo above the momentary differences in feeling; and had the way in which The died not been ordinary and ufual, The certainly would not have applied herself to the invention of a new one. We are therefore to look upon her dying by the bite of the Ceraftes, as only following the manner of death which he had feen commonly adopted by those who were intended to die without torment.

Galen fpeaking of the afpic in the great city of Alexandria, fays, I have seen how speedily they (the afpics) occafioned death. Whenever any person is condemned to die whom they wish to end quickly and without torment, they put the viper to his breaft, and fuffering him there

to creep a little, the man is presently killed. Paufanias fpeaks of parti cular ferpents that were to be found in Arabia among the balfam trees feveral of which I procured both alive and dead, when I brought the tree from Beder Hunein; but they were still the fame fpecies of ferpent, only fome from fex, and fome from want of age, had not the horns, though in every other respec they could not be mistaken. Iba Sina, called by Europeans Avicenna, has defcribed this animal very exactly; he fays it is frequent in Shem (that is the country about and fouth of Damafcus) and also in Egypt; and he makes a very good obfervation on their manners; that they do not go or walk straight, but move by contracting themfelves. But in the latter part of his defcription he feems not to have known the fers pent he is fpeaking of, because he fays its bite is cured in the fame manner as that of the viper and Ceraftes, by which, it is implied, that the animal he was defcribing was not a Ceraftes, and the Ceraftes is not a viper, both which affertions are falfe.

The general fize of the Ceraftes from the extremity of its fnout to the end of its tail, is from thirteen to fourteen inches. Its head is triangular, very flat, but higher near where it joins the neck than towards the nose. The length of its head, from the point of the nofe to the joining of the neck, is ten twelfths of an inch, and the breadth nine twelfths. Between its horns is three twelfths. The opening of its mouth, or rictus oris eight twelfths Its horns in length three twelfths. Its large canine teeth fomething more than two twelfths and an half. Its neck at the joining of the head four twelfths. The body where thickeft ten twelfths. Its tail at the joining of the body two twelfths and an half. The tip of the tail

one twelfth. The length of the tail one inch and three twelfths. The aperture of the eye two welfths, but this varies apparently according to the impreffion of light. The Ceraftes has fixteen final immoveable teeth, and in the upper jaw two canine teeth, hollow, crooked inward, and of a remarkable fine polifh, white in colour, inclining to blueish. Near one fourth of the bottom is ftrongly fixed in the upper jaw, and folds back like a clafp knife, the point inclining inwards, and the greatest part of the tooth is covered with a green foft membrane, not drawn tight, but as it were wrinkled over it. Immedi ately above this is a flit along the back of the tooth, which ends nearly in the middle of it, where the tooth curves inwardly. From this aper ture I apprehend that it fheds its poifon, not from the point, where with the best glaffes I never could perceive an aperture, fo that the tooth is not a tube, but hollow only half way; the point being for making the incifion, and by its preffure occafioning the venom in the bag at the bottom of the fang to rife in the tooth, and fpill itself through the flit into the wound.

By this flat pofition of the tooth along the jaw, and its being defend ed by the membrane, it eats in perfect fafety; for the tooth cannot prefs the bag of poifon at the root while it lies in this pofition, nor can it rife in the tube to fpill itself, nor can the tooth make any wound fo as to receive it ; but the animal is fuppofed to eat but feldom, or only when it is with young.

The viper has but one row of teeth, none but the canine are noxious. The poifon is very copious for fo fmall a creature, it is fully as large as a drop of laudanum dropt from a phial by a careful hand. Viewed through a glass, it appears not perfectly transparent or pellu

cid. I fhould imagine it hath other refervoirs than the bag under the tooth, for I compelled it to scratch eighteen pigeons upon the thigh as quick as poffible, and they all died nearly in the fame interval of time; but I confefs the danger at tending the diffection of the head of this creature made me fo cautious, that any obfervation I should make upon thefe parts would be less to be depended upon.

People have doubted whether or not this yellow liquor is the poison, and the reafon has been, that anis mals who had tafted it did not die as when bitten; but this reason does not hold in modern phyfics. We know why the faliva of a mad dog has been given to animals and has not affected them; and a German phyfician was bold enough to distil the pus, or putrid matter, flowing from the ulcer of a perfon infected by the plague, and tafte it afterwards without bad confequences; fo that it is clear the poifon has no activity, till through fome fore or wound it is admitted into circulation. Again, the tooth itself, divefted of that poifon, has as little effect. The viper deprived of his canine teeth, an operation very eafily performed, bites' without any fatal confequence with the others; and many inftances there have been of mad dogs having bit people cloathed in coarfe woollen ftuff, which had fo far cleaned the teeth of the faliva in paffing through it, as not to have left the smallest in flammation after the wound.

I can myfelf vouch, that all the black people in the kingdom of Sennaar, whether Funge or Nuba, are perfectly armed against the bite of either fcorpion or viper. They take the Ceraftes in their hands at all times, put them in their bofoms, and throw them to one another as children do apples or balls, without having irritated them by this ufage fo much as to bite. The Arabs