HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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empire, or rather republic, which, like some others which date their origin fromthe period when even the noxious arts were less cultivated, soon became ex-ploded, and not a few of them considered as ridiculous.

However this might be the treatment which human ingenuity, so misapplied,on some occasions met with, the introduction of these contrivances and schemes,notwithstanding subsequent improvement might render them ridiculous, wereall of them, generally speaking, productive of dismay in those against whomthey were first practised, and consequently of advantage to all who origin-ally made use of them. Among these may claim priority, at least on accountof its eccentricity, that strange but much celebrated invention brought forwardby Annibal, in his war with the people of Pontus, of throwing vessels filledwith snakes on the decks of their gallies. When the fleets were in the act ofapproaching each other, it appeared ridiculous in the extreme to the enemy,that the yard-arms of their opponents were armed with potter’s vessels. Igno-rant of their contents, they viewed them with contempt till they beheld crawl-ing on their decks so new and unexpected a foe. The effect produced was pre-cisely what the genius of Annibal, exalted as it certainly was, considering therude time in which he flourished, had foreseen. It was strictly conformableto that of many other nearly innocent but uncommon stratagems, which havefrequently spread terror and dismay through fleets and armies, when thesword and thunder of their real enemies W'ere incapable of effecting the samepurpose. The foe fled on the instant, without venturing to attempt a contestagainst an antagonist who had so unexpectedly brought against them means ofoffence to which they were unaccustomed. Some controversy has taken placeamong historians as to the reality of this fact. They suggest, that the vesselsin question, thrown on board the enemy, were not filled with the poison ofliving serpents, which might, without much difficulty, have been completelyavoided, while the introduction of allies, so strange on the part of Annibal,would have been not only difficult in the extreme, and may, with somedegree of probability, be pronounced impossible, but with far different meansof offence. These ingenious sceptics, with a.considerable share of reason ontheir side, wish to persuade and convince the inquisitive, that the serpentsmentioned by Justin, who is one of the historians which has recorded the fact,were nothing more than calthrops, chausse-traps, or crow-feet, as they arecalled by the English : small iron instruments, having four: points each, two.

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