134 president's address. 



I think it would be worth the while to inquire into and to 

 note any traditions, however extravagant and wild they may 

 seem, which are found lingering in the remoter scenes of our visits, 

 and refer to the supposed physical character of the country in old 

 times, and of the creatures then living in it. Lawyers are some- 

 times said to be hard of belief, and to raise cavils at evidence in 

 court, on which in ordinary life we act readily. It must, I doubt, 

 be admitted that, knowing the sway of interest and passions, 

 we are loath to accept, in its full colour and dimensions, any fact 

 from a partisan witness; but our experience, on the other hand, 

 leads to the belief that cases entirely of invention are rare; there 

 is a kernel of truth in every statement, and what we have to 

 guard against is what men embellish, not what they invent. To 

 carry this into our special pursuit, I think we may find that 

 some physical fact of interest lies at the core of many distorted 

 and inflated traditions. I should like to see registered such wild 

 stories as those of Conyers and the Serpent; the Linton Worm, 

 in Eoxburghshire ; the Dragon of Wantley; the Wormhill at 

 Lumley ; or the tale, cited from Procopius, by Mr. Bruce, in his 

 exhaustive work on the Roman Wall, of the swarms of serpents 

 that infested the county beyond that barrier. I know that modern 

 ingenuity has tried to find some allegory or heraldic emblem under 

 these ancient stories; but I confess my belief that they actually 

 shadow out the existence in early times, when our island was swamp 

 and forest, of some gigantic monsters of the serpent tribe, like the 

 Ahoma of Surinam, described by Stedman as amphibious, and fre- 

 quenting low and marshy places, and which have disappeared from 

 Europe as the primitive jungle has been cleared away. It is strange, 

 otherwise, that there should be such uniformity in the charac- 

 teristics of these traditions. It is not the Phoenix of Egypt, or the 

 Roc of the Arabian tales which we hear of, but always some enor- 

 mous reptile; and even when there is no legendary account of 

 their ravages, we may trace the popular belief in the names of 

 ancient places, as the Drachenfels on the Rhine, and the Draclaw, 

 or the Dragonlaw, which is noticed in one of Mr. Carr's interesting 

 papers on our local etymology. 



It may be worth a sentence or two to consider what is the 



