Moll Davis by Bernard Capes — Read

Mr. Pepys -- to mention him once again -- kept, as we know, a commonplace book, in which he was accustomed to jot down (in shorthand, let us hope) the good stories, post-prandial and otherwise, which came his way. It must have been a rich if unseemly collection, and is ill lost in these days to a world which, whatever its mental capital, has never more than enough of refreshing anecdotes to go round. Included in it, one may be sure, were those gems of information (as related in the Diary) proffered at my lord Crewe's table by one Templer on the habits of the viper and the tarantula. This Mr. Templer, we note, was a clergyman, and by virtue of his cloth should be exonerated from the suspicion, otherwise irresistible, that he was pulling our Samuel's fat leg. But it is worth quoting the passage _in extenso_ that the reader may judge for himself --

"He told us some [i.e. serpents] in the waste places of Lancashire do grow to a great bigness, and do feed upon larkes which they take thus: They observe, when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they come to be just underneath them; and there they place themselves with their mouth uppermost, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson upon the bird; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent; which is very strange. "