THE DRAGON: A FANCY OR A FACT 125 



they are kept in check by the bird known as the Ibis, 

 which on that account is held sacred, since they increase 

 so rapidly that unless devoured they would render it 

 impossible for man to maintain himself on the earth. 

 They invade Egypt in swarms, flying across the Red Sea. 

 All this agrees with my suggestion that the winged 

 " serpents " heard of by Herodotus were really locusts ; 

 and the creature drawn in Fig. 27 may well be a locust 

 transformed by fancy into a winged snake. 



It would be a very interesting but a lengthy task to 

 trace out the origin and history of the various traditional 



FIG. 26. Egyptian four-winged 

 serpent as drawn on ancient 

 Egyptian temples. 



FIG. 27. Two-winged ser- 

 pent, symbolic of the 

 goddess Eileithya, from 

 a drawing on an Egyptian 

 temple. 



monsters, such as the basilisk, the gorgon, the cocka- 

 trice, the salamander, and the epimacus, which have 

 come into European legend and belief, and to give some 

 account of the special deadly qualities of each. St. 

 Michael and St. George slaughtering each his dragon 

 and rescuing a lovely maiden from its clutches are only 

 appropriations by the new religion of the similar deeds 

 ascribed to Greek heroes, such as Hercules, Bellerophon, 

 and Perseus. Often a belief in the existence of a 

 monster has arisen by a misunderstanding, on the part 

 of a credulous people, of a drawing or carving showing 

 a strange mixture of the leading characteristics of 

 different animals, which was meant by the man who 



