SARAPH (9-1). When the Israelites were in the wilderness they were visited, as a punishment for their murmuring, by fiery serpents (04e;rum wt.-cm), Num. xxi. 6. This saraph, the sup posed winged serpent, we take to be a Haye, one of the more eastern species or varieties, which have tbe faculty of actually distending the hood, as if they had wings at the side of the head, and are the same as, or nearly allied to, the well-known spec tacle-snake of India. The serpent may exhibit this particular state of irritation when it stands half erect with its hood distended, or it may be that variety which is possessed of this faculty to the greatest extent. Nega Reflectrix, the Pof or Spooch adder of the Cape colonists, is reported by Dr. Smith to be scarcely distinct from the Egyp tian Naga Haye. With regard to the faculty of flying, the lengthened form, the muscular appara tus, the absence of air-cells, and the whole osteo logical structure, are all incompatible with flig,ht or the presence of wings. Flying serpents are only found represented in the symbolical pictures of Egypt, where they occur with birds' wings. Those of history, and of barbarous nations excessively habituated to figurative forms of speech, are various, some being so called because of their rapid motion, others on account of a kind of spring they are said to make at their victims, and a third class because they climb trees, and are reported to swing them selves from thence upon their victims, or to other trees. Now, many species of serpents are climbers; many hang by the tail from slender branches of low trees in highly-heated glens, snapping at in sects as they wheel around them ; but all are deli cately jointed ; and if any should swing further than merely to change their hold, and should miss catching a branch, they would most certainly be dislocated, and, if not killed, very seriously injured.
Of the so-called flying, or rather darting ser pents, Niebuhr found, near Basra, a venomous species called Heie Sursurie, and Heie Thiare, that is, flying serpent,' because it was said to fling itself from one tree to another. Admiral Anson
heard, at the island of Quibo, of snakes flying without wings : we may notice the Acontias and Prester, that fell like arrows from the tops of trees, and the green LEtula of Ceylon, said to spring from trees at the eyes of cattle—an accusation repeated of more than one species in tropical America. Next we have the Uler Tampang Hari, seen in a forest near the river Pedang; Bessie, some where, we believe, in the Australasian islands, under circumstances that most certainly require confirmation ; since this fiery serpent, so called from the burning pain and fatal effect of its bite, swung itself from one tree to another 240 feet dis tant, with a declination to the horizon of only about fifteen degrees ! We find Leffah and Balan, both conjectured to be the Saraph, without being able to point out the species in natural history, where, nevertheless, it seems most likely that varieties, or perhaps dif ferent species of the common viper may be meant, as is likewise assumed of Acontias and Prester, since that family, in hot and dry climates, is far more virulently noxious than in Europe. The Leffah, though little more than a foot long, re garded by Shaw at least as the most formidable serpent of Northern Africa, is one of this genus, and may be the (rilftti) Ephelz, Arabic Eplia, and Persian Illar-iefy ; but as there is some difference in dimensions and markings, as well as a still greater extent of region assigned to these, more than one species of viper is most likely included in the above names. But that the Epheh is a name of most ancient date is plain from its being em ployed in Job xx. 16 and Is. xxx. 6 ; while under the form of exESpa—that is viper'—it occurs in the N. T., Matt. iii. 7 ; xii. 34 ; xxiii. 33 ; Luke iii. 7 ; and Acts xxviii. 3. The last of these texts confirms the common superstitious belief of anti quity, which regarded the bite of one of these ser pents as a punishment directly inflicted by heaven. —C. H. S.