GRIFFINS AND UNICOBNS 



Some of the creatures that we read about in the books 

 of the old travellers are quite easy to believe in, for, 

 after all, they are not very unlike the birds and beasts that 

 are to be seen to-day in different parts of the world. The 

 Phoenix, though bigger, was- not more beautiful than 

 the tiny humming birds that dart through tropical forests, 

 nor more splendid than the noisy macaws, and we can 

 picture it to ourselves without any difficulty. But nobody 

 now will ever go in search of the gourd that grows on a 

 tree, and contains a little flesh-and-blood lamb ; or expect, 

 in travelling through Scotland, to find a Barnacle-Goose 

 tree, with ducks instead of fruit, as a very clever gentle- 

 man who later became Pope did about four hundred and 

 fifty years ago ! 



To us, who can look at a giraffe or a rhinoceros 

 any day we choose, there is nothing so particularly 

 strange about a griffin, which had the body of a lion, and 

 the wings and head of an eagle, and was as strong as 

 ten lions, or a hundred eagles. ' He will cany,' we are 

 told, ' flying to his nest, a great horse, or two oxen yoked 

 together as they go at the plough, or a man in full 

 armour. For he hath his talons (claws) so long and so 

 large and great upon his feet, as though they were the 

 horns of great oxen, so that men make cups of them 

 to drink of : and of his ribs and wing-feathers they make 

 a very strong bow, to shoot with arrows and querrels.' 

 A ' querrel,' it is needful to explain, was a bolt shot from 

 a crossbow. 



