Chapter VI.

1. Animals covered with scaly plates, as the lizard and other quadrupeds and serpents, are omnivorous, for they eat both flesh and grass, and serpents lick their prey more than any other animal; all these creatures, and indeed all with spongy lungs, drink very little, and all that are oviparous are of this kind, and have but little blood. Serpents are all very fond of wine, so that they hunt the viper by placing vessels of wine in the hedge-rows, and they are captured when intoxicated. Serpents devour any animal that they may have captured, and when they have sucked out the juice, they reject all the remainder; nearly all such animals do this, as also the spiders. But the spiders suck the juice without swallowing the animal. Serpents suck the juice internally.

2. The serpent swallows any food which may be presented to it, for it will devour both birds and beasts, and suck eggs. When it has taken its food it draws itself up, till it stands erect upon its extremity, it then gathers itself up and contracts itself a little, so that when stretched out the animal it has swallowed may descend in its stomach; it does this because its œsophagus is long and thin. Phalangia and serpents can live a long while without food, this may be seen in those that are kept by dealers in medicine.