ADDER'S TONGUE:** A genus of the natural order of filices, belonging to the cryptogamia class of plants. The fronds are articulated, flat, and turned to the two sides; with the articuli or joints opening across. There are seven species; of which the only remarkable one is the vulgatum, or common adder's-tongue, which is a native of several places of Britain, growing in meadows and moist pastures. The country-people make an ointment of the fresh leaves, and use it as a vulnerary to green wounds; which is a very ancient application, recommended by Matthiolus, Tragus, and others.

**OPHIOMANCY,** in antiquity, the art of making predictions from serpents. Thus Calchas, on seeing a serpent devour eight sparrows with their dam, foretold the duration of the siege of Troy: and the seven coils of a serpent that was seen on Anchises' tomb, were interpreted to mean the seven years that Æneas wandered from place to place before he arrived at Latium.

**OPHIORHIZA,** in botany: A genus of the monocotyledonous order, belonging to the pentandria class of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 47th order, Stellatae. The corolla is funnel-shaped; the capsule twin, bilocular, and polyperous. There are two species; the most remarkable of which is the Asiaticum, or true lignum colubrinum. The root of this is known in the East Indies to be a specific against the poison of the most dreadful animal called the hooded serpent. There is a treatise in Amoen. Acad. tom. iv. upon this subject, wherein the author Joh. And. Dardanus undertakes, from the description of such authors as had seen it upon the spot, to ascertain the plant from which the genuine root is taken. It appears in this account, that it had puzzled the European. Ophioxylon ropean physicians; and what had been sold in the shops Ophir, for it, is the root of a very different plant, and of a poisonous nature.

The true root is called mungus, for the following reason.—There is a kind of weasel in the East Indies, called mungatia by the natives, mungo by the Portuguese, and munca by the Dutch. This animal pursues the hooded serpent, as the cat does the mouse with us. As soon as the serpent appears, the weasel attacks him; and if she chances to be bit by him, she immediately runs to find a certain vegetable, upon eating which she returns, and renews the fight. The Indians are of opinion that this plant is the mungos.

That celebrated traveller Kämpfer, who kept one of these weasels tame, that eat with him, lived with him, and was his companion wherever he went, says he saw one of these battles between her and the serpent, but could not certainly find out what root the weasel looked out for. But whether the weasel first discovered this antidote or not, it is an infallible remedy against the bite of the hooded serpent. And this he undertakes to ascertain.