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 buckler. This species of serpent is very frequently mentioned by authors; but so carelessly described, 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 serpent which he had met with in Italy, and which had a sort of callosus excrescence on the forehead, which he takes to have been the alpis 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 insensible pricks found in her arm; and Plutarch says it is unknown what she died of. At the same time, it must be observed, that the slightness of the pricks found in her arm furnishes no presumption against the fact; for no more than the prick of a needle-point dipt in the poison was necessary for the purpose. See the article Serpent.

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 operation; and his opinion seems to correspond with the accounts of most writers, as well as with the effects described to have been produced upon Cleopatra; for which see the article already referred to.

The ancients had a platter called Ἀσπάραγος, made of this terrible animal, of great efficacy as a disquietant of strumae 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 materia medica.