bee dispeopled, for they were great devourers
of men, and their abiding was in the
Mountaines of Tesacan. They were bigger than a
lion, with a kind of haire and no feathers,
and with their tallons and teeth they break
men's bones." Another old writer, treating
of the wonders of Ethiopia, says, "in this
province (Damute) there be griffons, which be
fowles so bigge that they kill the buffes
(buffaloes); and carrie them in their clawes
as an eagle carryeth a rabbet."

The chief private occupation of the griffin,
when quietly at home, appears to be that of
keeping watch over a vast amount of
concealed treasure, his property; though what
he proposes to do with it is, probably, as great
an enigma to him as it is to most other
misers. He is obliged, however, to take care
of his cash, for those burglarious Scythians,
the Arimaspians, who adorned their hair
with gold, are always on the look-out, though
they have only one eye a-piece, to steal it.
This is a practice alluded to by Milton in
those strikingly-descriptive lines where, speaking
of the Fiend as he careers through Space,
on his way to Paradise, he says:

As when a Gryphon through the wilderness,
With winged course, o'er hill and moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth,
Has from his watchful custody purloin'd
The guarded gold: so eagerly the Fiend
O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense or rare,
With head, hands, wings or feet pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."

The hoarding propensity of the griffins has
caused them to be confounded with certain
ants of most enormous size—as large, say
various Greek authors, as dogs or foxes
("grete as houndes," remarks Sir John
Mandevile, who, of course, confirms the fable),
which, inhabiting the regions of Taprobana
(the Dardan country, according to Strabo, to
the east of the Indian mountains), live on a
large plateau, where, during the winter, they
dig under ground, and throw up hillocks like
moles. This earth contains a great deal of
gold, and to obtain it from the formidable
burrowers the gold-hunters throw them pieces
of venison, and, while the ants are intent on
eating it, they make off with the precious
metal as fast as ever they can. It is a
mistake, however, to suppose that the griffin and
the giant pismire have anything in common
except the tradition which assigns to each a
remarkable fondness for gold—a link which
connects these fabulous animals with many
real creatures, whom all of us are tolerably
well acquainted with.

Of that royal emblem, the Salamander
—adopted by Francis the First, of France, as
his device, with the motto, Nutrisco et
Extinguo—a good deal has been related which
must also be taken on trust. Bartholomew
de Glanvil assigns the Ganges for its habitation,
and tells us that, though it prefers the
waters of that famous and sacred river, it has
not the slightest objection to be transferred
to the antagonistic element, fire, which, on
account of the coldness of its nature, has no
effect upon it. He assures us, on the authority
of Saint Isidore (who gets his authority from
Pliny), that the venom of the salamander is
more poisonous than that of any other
serpent; "for," he says, "the latter kill
only one person at a time with their sting,
whereas the salamander inflicts a mortal
wound on many." He proves it in this way:
"For if a salamander climbs up a fruit-tree,
she poisons all the fruit; and all who eat of
the same die withouten remedye. So, also,
when she goes into a river, she taints the
water with her poison, and all who drink
thereof die." This must be rather against
the salubrity of the sacred stream, of whose
waters, nevertheless, many millions of
Hindoos drink daily without much inconvenience.
However, Glanvil is strong on this point,
and vows that not less than four thousand men
of the conquering army of Alexander the
Great (to say nothing of a couple of thousand
beasts of burden) took their last draught in
the salamandered flood. Returning to the anti-
inflammable attributes of the creature, he
informs us that "there is no beast in the world
which fire does not burn save and except the
salamander, which the more it is in the fire,
the longer it lives there and rejoices in it."
The travelling showman who said of his
eagle, "The hotterer the sun is, the higher he
flies," must have taken a hint from Bartholomew
de Glanvil, who adds, "The fact is"
(this is a modern rendering of his words) "he
puts out the fire by his frigidity."

Albertus Magnus, refuses to believe in the
asbestine nature of the salamander, and tried
to prove its impossibility by experiment. He
could not, it is true, procure a real salamander
for the purpose, but he operated upon
large spiders; and the result, contrary to his
expectation, rather favoured the idea of their
being insured against fire. One of them
placed upon a red hot iron, remained there a
long time without stirring or seeming to feel
the heat; another, that was urged towards a
light, extinguished it, as if it had been blown
out. At a much later period than the time
of Albertus—so recently, indeed, as the days of
Newton, Milton, and Molière—the Journal des
Sçavants describes the decisive experiments
which were made at Rome upon a salamander
that had been brought from India. "Placed
upon a brisk fire, it swelled up, and from its
body dropped a liquid which extinguished the
charcoal beneath it; the charcoal, constantly
relit, was as constantly put out in the same
manner during two continuous hours, and at
the end of that time the salamander was
withdrawn from the flames, and lived nine months
afterwards." Father Hardouin, who comments
on this adventure, expresses his regret that
the animal which stood fire so well was not
fully described. But, while on the subject of
credulity, one need not go further back than the