"Speed of snakes is delusion produced by fright."  From Popular Mechanics, 1932.

From Fun magazine, 1893.

From Michaelis Majeri, Secretioris Naturae Secretorum Scrutinium Chymicum, 1687.

Here's the great sea serpent and the old gooseberry, from Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1875.

"The 'Reversus like an eel,' as represented by Aldrovandi in 'De Piscibus,' 1638."  Reproduced in the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1915.

The Loch Ness monster.  Date uncertain.

From Jugend, 1910.

By William T. Horton, 1907.  The caption reads, "They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent's; the poison of vipers is on their lips. —The Psalm"

"The Tsar of the Snakes listened carefully."  From The Laughing Prince by Parker Fillmore and illustrated by Jay Van Everen, 1921.

Here are two food chains from Biology and Man by Benjamin Gruenberg, 1944

From Sierra Leone, or, the White Man's Grave by George Banbury, 1888.

From Religious Allegories by William Holmes, 1848.

A detail of a postcard from 1917.