The modern Greeks denominate it
"the fish of St. Christopher," from a legend which relates that it was
trodden on by that saint, when he bore his divine burden across an arm of
the sea. Some species of _Echini_, fossilized, and seen frequently in
Norfolk, are termed by the ignorant peasantry, and considered, _Fairy
Loaves_, to take which, when found, is highly unlucky.
The _Amphisbaena_, from its faculty of moving backwards or forwards at
pleasure, has been thought to have a head at either extremity of its
reptile body, but close inspection proves this opinion false. The
fascinating power of the _Rattlesnake_, of which so many stories have in
times past been related, and which was asserted to exist in its glittering
eyes, has been of late years resolved into that extreme nervous terror of
its victim (at sight of so certain a foe) which deprives it of the power
of motion, and causes it to fall, an unresisting prey, into the reptile's
jaws. We may here pause to observe, _en passant_, that the antipathy which
people of all ages and nations have felt against every reptile of the
serpent tribe, from the harmless worm to the hosts of deadly "dragons"
which infest the torrid zone, and the popular opinion that all are
venomous, often in spite of experience, seems to be not so much
superstition, as a terror of the species, implanted, since the fall, in
our bosoms, by the same Divine Being who at that period pronounced the
serpent to be the most accursed beast of the field.
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