364 A TKIAD OF MEDLEVAL MYTHS. 



and so remained until the consul tried to lay hold of it with 

 the tongs. Thereupon it ran to the corner of the chimney ; 

 leaving the tip of its tail between the blades of the tongs. 

 No sooner arrived at the corner, than it buried itself in a 

 heap of hot ashes. Once more, the consul made an attack 

 on the terrific monster that had so alarmed the cook. 



Again did M. Pothonier seize his adversary with a pair 

 of tongs, and this time successfully. He drew out of the 

 fire some sort of small lizard, which he thrust into a bottle 

 of spirits of wine, and sent it to the naturalist Buffon. The 

 naturalist Sonnini happened to come soon after to Rhodes. 

 He saw the bottled monster before its dispatch to Buffon, 

 and divesting the recital of its supernaturalism, he reduced 

 the prodigy to very small proportions. The consul Sonnini 

 testified was a very amiable man, but completely ignorant 

 of all that related to natural history. There was a lizard 

 indeed a somewhat mutilated lizard. The feet and some 

 parts of the body were half roasted. The French consul's 

 lizard salamander had been in the fire, and bore strong evi- 

 dences of having come from the fire. Its feet, and some 

 parts of its body, were half consumed. 



Here then do we find a poor little lizard scaring a he-cook 

 well-nigh out of his wits ; and impressing a staid gentleman 

 of consular dignity with superstitious feelings akin to awe. 

 In this incident we see materials enough to account for the 

 fire-defying part of the salamandrine myth. This was not the 

 first time, doubtless, that a lizard had been cast amidst fire- 

 wood into the fire, and that the creature's resistance to flame 

 had been made manifest to observers. If a French consul's 

 man-cook, in the eighteenth century, was struck with the 

 portent as it seemed to him and his master, made half 

 credulous what wonder that others had been the same when 

 the world was younger, and that out of the belief came the 

 fire-defying salamander ? 



In our own days, the cooling function of skin-transpiration 



