The New Hampshire Gazette And Historical Chronicle

Derby-Fell, Sept. 23. The following circumstance, however improbable, may be depended upon as matter of fact: A farmer's wife, in this neighbourhood, who attended duly to the milking of her cows morning and evening, observed for two or three mornings successively that her best cow was deficient in her usual quantity of milk: this made her suspect that some of her neighbours were not over honest; and communicating her suspicions to her husband, they resolved to watch all the succeeding night, which they did without making any discovery, till about sunrising, when they observed the cow, on whom they had their eyes fixed all the night, move towards a bush at some distance, in the pasture and there to make a stand: following her thither, they observed a most enormous overgrown adder or hag-worm, crawl out of the bush, and winding up one of the cow's hind legs, apply its mouth to one of the paps, and begin to suck, which she suffered it patiently to do, till the farmer, attacked it with a cudgel, and ere it could recover its den, killed it. It measured upwards of four feet in length, and the skin of it, stuffed, may be seen at the farmer's house. The whole is looked upon as the strangest phenomenon that has been known within the memory of the oldest man living.