CHAPTER V. 
THE DRAGONS OF OLD TIME—DINOSAURS. 
‘¢ What we know is but little; what we do not know is immense.”—LA 
PLACE. 
Was there ever an age of dragons? ‘Tradition says there was ; 
but there is every reason to believe that the fierce and blood- 
thirsty creatures, of which such a variety present themselves, are 
but creations of the imagination,—useful in their way, no doubt, 
as pointing a moral or adorning a tale, but, nevertheless, 
wholly without foundation in fact. The dragon figures in the 
earliest traditions of the human race, and crops up again in full 
force in European medieval or even late romance. 
In ancient Egyptian mythology, Horus, the son of Isis, slays 
the evil dragon. In Greece, the infant Hercules, while yet in his 
cradle, strangles deadly snakes; and Perseus, after engaging in 
fierce struggle with the sea-monster, slays it, and rescues Andro- 
meda from a cruel death. In England, we have the heroic legend 
of St. George and the Dragon depicted on oursovereigns. But it 
is easy to see a common purpose running through these legends. 
They are considered by many to be solar myths, and havea moral 
purpose. The dragons or snakes are emblems of darkness and 
evil ; the heroes emblems of light, and so of good. The triumph 
of good over evil is the theme they were intended to illustrate. 
The dragons, then, are clearly products of the imagination, based, 
no doubt, on the huge and uncouth reptiles of the present human 
era, such as crocodiles, pythons, and such creatures. 
