Here's an ornate capital S from Fra Lippo Lippi by Margaret Vere Farrington, 1899.

From La Mujer magazine (Buenos Aires, 1899).

Here's the snake with the gold, in From Whose Bourne by Robert Barr, 1893.

From Cossack Fairy Tales and Folktales by Robert Nisbet Bain and illustrated by H. W. Mitchell, 1902.

From Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak by Harriette MacDougall, 1882.

From The 'Red and White' Book of Menzies by David Prentice Menzies, 1908.

From Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1894.

A portrait of author George Dunlop Leslie by F. Walker (1888).

"Dry haze," from Tropical Nature, 1876.

Scorpions and serpents from Prodigiorvm ac Ostentorvm Chronicon, 1557.

From The Prisoner of Chiloane, or, With the Portuguese in South-East Africa by Wallis Mackay, 1890.

From Blasts from The Ram's Horn, 1902.

"There we two were, I looking up at the viper, and the viper looking down upon me, flickering at me with its tongue," from Lavengro by George Borrow, 1896.

Asclepius [Aesculapius] originated as a sideshow attraction.  This we find documented in The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett, 1897.

From Lays of Modern Oxford by Anon., 1874.

An illustration from Alpine Memories by Emile Javelle (1899).  The caption reads: "A Dragon in the Alps.  (From Scheuchzer's Ouresiphoites Helveticus, Zurich, 1723.)"

The witch of Ben Y Gloe from The Art of Deer Stalking by William Scrope (1839).

The serpents are emblazoned with death, destruction, murder, mischief, madness, brutality, robbery, and blasphemy. From The Working Man's Friend and Family Instructor (1833).  The caption reads: "Will you take a glass?"

"The Serpent Cigarette": an illustration from an 1882 issue of Punch magazine.