42 SNAKES. 



spite of Aristotle (a comparatively recent authority), dragons 

 and such-like chimaerical creatures have pervaded the mind 

 both of the erudite and the ignorant, in association with 

 serpents, till within three hundred years, and are not ev^en 

 yet altogether discarded. 



Nor am I inclined to believe that the terror-inspiring 

 representations of classic days are so unreal as might 

 be supposed. Palaeontology is continually bringing to 

 light new evidences of the presence of man on the earth 

 in ages far remote ; and we do not know for certain 

 what strange forms of animal life were his contemporaries, 

 or when the faculty of speech was so far developed 

 in him as to enable him to learn about his predecessors, 

 which were still more terrible. We do know that fossils 

 of mammoth creatures, passing strange, are coeval with 

 fossil humian remains, and to those early types of humanity 

 a knowledge of still stranger creatures of reptilian forms 

 may have been handed down from mouth to mouth ; for 

 there is generally a germ of truth at the root of a myth. 

 Fossil remains tell us of the gigantic forms of ancient 

 reptiles, or compound reptile - fish or reptile - birds, and 

 quadrupeds which have gradually diminished in size or 

 become altogether extinct as our own period has been 

 approached. 



Said Professor Huxley, at the British Association in 

 1878, 'Within the last twenty years we have an astonishing 

 accumulation of evidence of the existence of man in ages 

 antecedent to those of which we have any historical record. 

 Beyond all question, man, and what is more to the purpose, 

 intelligent man, existed at a time when the whole physical 



