in natural history, a small poisonous kind of serpent, whose bite gives a speedy but easy death. It is said to be thus denominated from the Greek ἀσπίς, shield, in regard to the manner of its lying convolved in a circle, in the centre of which is the head, which it exerts, or raises, like the umbo or umbilicus of a buck- ler. This species of serpent is very frequently men- tioned by authors; but to carelessly describe, that it is not easy to determine which, if any of the species known at present, may properly be called by this name. It is said to be common in Africa, and about the banks of the Nile; and Bellonius mentions a small species of ser- pent which he had met with in Italy, and which had a sort of callous excrescence on the forehead, which he takes to have been the aspis of the ancients. It is with the asp that Cleopatra is said to have dispatched herself, and prevented the designs of Augustus, who intended to have carried her captive to adorn his triumphal entry into Rome. But the fact is contested: Brown places it among his vulgar errors. The indications of that queen's having used the ministry of the asp, were only two almost infallible pricks found in her arm. In reality, Plutarch says, it is unknown what death she died of.

Lord Bacon makes the asp the least painful of all the instruments of death: he supposes it to have an affinity to opium, but to be less disagreeable in its ope- ration: Which, however, does not so well agree with the description of the symptoms given by Dioscorides and others; who inform us, that the bite is followed by a stupor of the whole body, paleness, coldness of the forehead, continual yawning, nictitation of the eye- lids, inclination of the neck, heaviness of the head, slumbering into a profound sleep, and lastly convulsions.

The ancients had a plaster called Ἀσπαράγος, made of this terrible animal, of great efficacy as a diffeicent of struma, and other indurations, and used likewise against pains of the gout. The flesh and skin, or exuviae, of the creature, had also their share in the ancient mate- ria medica.