344 A TKIAD OF MEDIEVAL MYTHS. 



eyes of a basilisk ; and invariably the accident has happened 

 in the recesses of some cave, or the depths of some mine 

 or well. So generally did the belief in basilisk -eye poison 

 prevail in England, at least up to the beginning of the last 

 century, that a writer on natural philosophy of that date 

 circumstantially accounts for it. Discussing the venom of 

 poisons generally, it was his object to prove that their ac- 

 tion depended on a mechanical function. He would have 

 his readers believe that poisons acted through the laceration 

 caused by the sharpness of their particles. Taking this as an 

 established fact, he goes on to set forth how very sharp the 

 particles of certain poisons may be ; seeing the basilisk-poison 

 acts through a mere eye-glance. This author does not seem 

 to have the remotest notion that the basilisk might be a fabled 

 creature merely. He writes with the same confidence of this 

 animal that a naturalist now might write concerning the rat- 

 tlesnake or cobra di capello. One point of testimony more 

 our author notes, viz. that basilisk-poison cannot act through 

 spectacle-glasses. 



After what has been stated concerning basilisk attributes, 

 it may seem extraordinary that Greek and Roman naturalists 

 treat of basilisk-hunting. Excitement of the chase is pro- 

 verbially fascinating. In all times sportsmen have for amuse- 

 ment courted danger. The question is not so much whether 

 sportsmen would now go out basilisk-stalking, were the crea- 

 ture really in existence, as how they would devise a way to 

 kill him. One must needs see the prey to be brought down ; 

 but how to see the basilisk, and not be oneself brought down? 

 I am not quite certain whether the basilisk was held to be 

 harmless if viewed posteriorly ; but even granting that to be 

 so, the creature might turn his head. Then, too, be the fact 

 remembered that his breath was poisonous. It does not seem 

 easy, I repeat, to imagine a way of killing the basilisk. The 

 ancients represent basilisk-stalking to have been conducted in 

 the following manner : People went out into the arid deserts 



