woman. The plant itself, which is not
fabulous, is described by Serapion and Dioscorides
as having been used for the same purpose
now answered by chloroform, before
painful operations with the knife or actual
cautery.

We say no more of botany, and will omit
from our zoology all record of the fabulous
properties ascribed to common things, as that
the spittle of a young man kills scorpions, or
that a toad being burnt to powder and the
powder left to itself there will be produced
out of it a new toad, and not only one but
many; or that to get rid of mice one should
fumigate the house with the left hoof of a
mule. We speak only of some of those
animals that are no longer named in any
volume of zoology. Such a creature is the
Amphisbœna, which is a snake having a head
in the right place and another where its tail
should be. This animal, being particular
about its eggs, holds up always one head to
watch them while with the other head it
sleeps. On the authority of Avicenna, it is
stated, that to see or hear this animal is
death, and that whatever it bites dissolves.
The Cacus is our old Arcadian friend who
drags his prey backwards into his cave, and
used to exist not only in Virgil's poetry, but
also in books of science. Cerastes was a
serpent with four horns, of which knife
handles were made, that sweated when near
poison. In the terrible old days of treachery
and passion it was quite worth a man's
while to have some means of testing the
meat into which he cut.

The Cephus was a man below, a sort of
dog above; this creature was never seen
except at games in Rome given by Pompey.
The Centrocata had the body of an ass, the
legs and head of a lion, the voice of an ox,
and a mouth splitting the head quite open
from ear to ear. Draco, the dragon, is an
old acquaintance. In all early books on
zoology he is carefully described, and there is
a good deal said about his medicinal properties.
He lived in caves on account of the
heat of his body, and was big enough in India
to crack elephants, India being the great seat
of an interminable war between the elephants
and dragons. There is a stone in the dragon's
head which is not a stone unless extracted
while he is alive; after his death it ceases to
be hard. This stone is the chief glory and
aid of Eastern kings. They cause dragons to
be put to sleep with medicated grasses, and then
stone them almost as easily as raisins. All
things poisonous fly from a dragon's fat. The
dragon's tongue taken in wine banishes nightmare.
The dragon's flesh is of a glassy colour
and cools those who feed upon it; for this
reason, the Ethiopians, who live in a hot
country, prefer that sort of meat. For old
acquaintance-sake we have stopped some
little time with the dragon, before passing
on to the Draconcopedes. This is the
serpent with a woman's head that tempted
Eve. Bede is of opinion that it showed only
its alluring face to Eve, and hid its serpent's
body behind the trunk or among the leaves
of the tree of knowledge. The Jaculus was a
winged serpent that descended upon trees and
killed by a look whatever lay beneath. Leviathan
is the great horse on which the devil
rides. It has terrible battles with the whale,
and when they fight the fishes round about
swarm in a crowd round the whale's tail. If
the whale be vanquished, all the fishes are
devoured; if the Leviathan, or Levin, be
baffled, he pours out of his throat a fearful
stench, which the whale repels by squirting
at it a great flood of water. In that case, the
fishes, the whale's vassals, are saved by their
feudal lord.

Maricomorion was a beast rarely seen, of
about the bigness of a lion. It had a serpent's
tail, a lion's feet, a man's head, and in
its mouth three rows of teeth. It was of a
reddish colour. Imitating the tones of the
human voice, it invited the approach of men
and then devoured them. Nepa was a serpent
of which the female perished in the
giving birth to young. The Onocentaur was
the Bully Bottom of the old zoologist, he had an
ass's head on a man's body.

A wonderful beast is the Pathyon, of
which the heathens thought that it partook
of the nature of divinity. It has a purple
coat, all radiant with scintillating light. Its
bones are wonderfully hard and strong, and
its nerves can only be torn asunder with the
greatest violence. The Pilosus is as a man
with the hoofed feet of a beast; the blessed
Hiero describes it in the life of Paul the
Hermit. In the zoology of our forefathers,
even the horse beloved of poets, Pegasus,
was figured and described. After that, we
need not be surprised at meeting also with
the Pigmies, mature at the age of three
years, old at seven; or at being told, as
matter of science, how they ride on wild
goats armed with arrows to make war
against the cranes and capture eggs.

As there was no system preferable in those
days, the arrangement of plants, beasts,
birds, &c., was made alphabetical. In turning
over the leaves of our book, we have
looked from Pegasus to Pigmies, and now
pause at Pediculi, the curse upon man's
head. They are either produced from
perspiration, we learn, or exhaled through the pores
of the skin. They swarm in the heads of travellers,
because in travel men perspire much
and meet with a paucity of baths.

Turning on to letter R, we pause at Regulus,
the basilisk. We find him discussed again
under the head birds: for as he is partly
cock and partly serpent, it is hard to know
whether he is rightly bird or beast. At the
sight of him, the breath of him, or the sound
of his hiss, men become dropsical and die.
The fatal part of him when he kills by being
looked at, are three hairs under his head.
The basilisk is produced out of an egg laid