100 Transactions of the 



presence in whatever form) to think of with dread and horror 

 as surpassingly formidable. 



There are four sources by which we can endeavour, though 

 without any absolute certainty (except in the two last) to 

 define the true characters of this wonderful animal : 

 these are sacred and profane history, geology, and natural 

 history. Dragon, in Scripture, is a word which answers 

 o-enerally to Hebrew words — tan, tannin, tannim — as in Ge- 

 nesis, chap. i. verse 21, 'And God created great whales.' 

 Job says : ' I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to 

 owls.' Cities reduced to desolation are often described by 

 the prophets as dens or dwelling-places for dragons ; as in 

 Jeremiah, chap. li. verse 37 : ' And Babylon shall become 

 heaps, a dwelling-place for dragons.' The prophet Isaiah, 

 foretelling the cities that should be laid waste by the Edo- 

 mites for joining with the Chaldeans against the Israelites, 

 says : ' And in her palaces shall come up thorns, nettles, and 

 brambles in the fortresses thereof : and it shall be an habita- 

 tion of dragons.' 



The fabulous history of St. George and the dragon is 

 founded upon the persecution of Christians by Diocletian. 

 St. George is said to have complained of his severities towards 

 them, for which he was imprisoned and beheaded a.d. 290. 

 Diocletian was represented as the dragon, with St. George, the 

 champion of the faith, thrusting his lance into the persecut- 

 ino- monster's side. But in fable and fiction, as well as 

 tradition, wherever there is much error there is generally 

 some amount of truth, out of which valuable facts may be 

 elicited. Dragons' heads and dragons' tails are astronomical 

 terms to denote the nodes of the moon and planets, as also 

 a constellation of the northern heavens, representing the 

 monster which guarded the garden of the Hesperides. 



The dragon of Geology is to be sought in the Saurians (a 

 term taken from the Greek ' aavpa,^ a lizard). Many fossil 

 skeletons of these strange reptiles have been found, some of 

 enormous length, the oldest in the lower part of the se- 

 condary strata. Some of the known species of Ichthyosaurus 

 must have exceeded thirty feet in length ; and, according to 

 Dr. Buckland, their eyes were sometimes larger than a man's 

 head. The saurians appear to have been in part marine ; 

 others were amphibious, others terrestrial, and some were 

 capable of flying. By far the most interesting of them is the 

 Pterodactyl, or flying dragon, of which Cuvier says, that of 

 aU the foi-ms whose ancient existence has been revealed to 

 us these flying reptiles are incontestibly the most extra- 



