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Updated: October 23, 2025
It is called by the Orientals the lier in wait, an appellation which agrees with the manners of the cerastes. Pliny says, that it hides its whole body in the sand, leaving only its horns exposed, which, being like grains of barley in appearance, attract birds within its reach, so as to become an easy prey.
"Upon the boat you would have met many of your land, friends maybe, who perchance would have turned upon you the eyes of suspicion, the shoulder cold with disdainful convention, whilst their tongue, more poisonous even than the forked tip of the cerastes cornutus, might, nay, would, have striven to corrupt your mind with a festering mass of doubt and suspicion and misgiving.
It haunts gardens, where it is of great use, feeding on mice, frogs, and various small reptiles. It has the power of greatly dilating the skin of the neck, and this it does when angered in a way that is very remarkable. The cerastes is also employed occasionally by the snake-charmers.
In the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis we find the remarkable prediction uttered by Jacob in reference to Dan, that he "shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, which biteth the horse's heels." The original term here is shephiphon, and is understood by several authors to denote the cerastes, a very poisonous kind of viper, distinguished by having horns.
Every Sunday when she twists those two curls on her forehead till they lift themselves like horns, puts up her eye-glasses and pays her respects to our pew, I catch myself whispering 'Cerastes! and wishing that I were only the camera of a photographer." "Take care, mother! would you accept a homestead in your contemplated 'Reservation'?" She pinched his ear. "Don't presume, sir, to preach to me.
The eggs of the tzepho, of which she lays eighteen or twenty, are equal to those of a pigeon, while those of the great boa are not more than two or three inches in length. As an instance, that the eggs of poisonous serpents do not always burst in the body of the female, we may mention the cerastes, which, we are assured, lays in the sand at least four or five, resembling in size those of a dove.
In Egypt, on the other hand, the cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as numerous as ever, and are much dreaded by all the natives except the professional snake charmers. The recent great multiplication of vipers in some parts of France is a singular and startling fact.
They came as if drawn by a spell: venomous toads and snakes of every description, asp and adder, cerastes and acontias; only one old serpent, disabled apparently by age, ignored the summons. The Chaldaean declared that the number was not complete, appointed the youngest of the snakes as his ambassador, and sent him to fetch the old serpent who presently arrived.
A dangerous serpent this; one never sees him, or hears him speak, or observes the dark glitter of his eye, without being reminded of a cerastes lythely rustling through the dry grass towards its victim. And there at last I thought we should never see him is our dear young joker of jokes, the same unaltered Flip whom we know, running down the school steps.
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