THE DRAGON. 



I IKE the dodo, the moa, and the great auk, the dragon is 

 ' admittedly an extinct animal, but that is no reason 

 why his characteristics should not be considered in these 

 pages. The question that has long agitated scientific 

 men is, first, as to the extent to which the personal pecu- 

 liarities of the dragon have been exaggerated by popular 

 tradition, and in the second place as to the period at which 

 he became extinct. There have been those who have even 

 asserted that his existence was purely apocryphal, but with 

 men so mentally constituted argument is useless. The 

 traditions of almost all nations point to the fact that not 

 only did the dragon exist as a race, but that individual 

 dragons continued to exist down to comparatively modern 

 times. We may set aside at once the dragon of Wantley. 

 Caesar makes no allusion to dragons existing in Great 

 Britain; Wantley did not exist before Caesar's time; there- 

 fore there can have been no dragon at Wantley. But it is 

 not possible so summarily to dispose of all legends, and it 

 is remarkable that the dragon should figure with almost 

 precisely the same characteristics in the folk lore of both 

 Western and Oriental peoples. Our most valuable national 

 coin bears its portrait, and it is the national emblem both 



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