BAS1LISC. Basiliscut Americ&nu* 



IN the earlier ages of science, when a few facts were struggling their way through the 

 superincumbent mass of fiction that had so long caused Natural History to be little more 

 than a collection of moral fables, the BASILISC was a creature upon whose wondrous 

 properties the inventive pens of successive narrators were never tired of dilating. Crowned 

 with a royal diadem, emblematical of its sovereign rule, the Basilisc held supreme sway over 

 the reptile race, and derives its name of Basilisc, or kinglike, " because he seemeth to be 

 the King of Serpents, not for his magnitude or greatnesse. For there are many serpents 

 bigger than he, as there be many four-footed beasts bigger than the lyon, but because of 

 his stately face and magnanimous minde." 



The Basilisc was thought to be an occasional lusus naturae, having during his life no 

 companion of his own kind, and to derive his existence from an egg laid by a cock when 

 he was very old, and sat upon by a snake. Some scientific writers, however, better 

 informed than the more popular zoologists, said that the egg was not incubated by 

 a snake, but by a toad. 



Before the Basilisc all living creatures but one were forced to fly, and even man would 

 fail dead from the glance of the kingly reptile's eye. "This poyson," says Topsel, 

 " infecteth the air, and the air so infected killeth all living things, and likewise all green 

 things, fruits and plants of the earth : it burneth up the grasse whereupon it goeth or 

 creepeth, and the fowls of the air fall down dead when they come near his den or lodging. 

 Sometimes he biteth a man or beast, and by that wound the blood turneth into choler, and 

 so the whole body becometh yellow or gold, presently killing all that touch it or come 

 near it." Even a horseman who had taken into his hand a spear which had been thrust 

 through a Basilisc, " did not only draw the poyson of it into his own body and so dyed, 

 but also killed his horse thereby." 



The only creature that could stand before the Basilisc and live, was said to be the 

 cock, whose shrill clarion the bird-reptile held in such terror, that on hearing the sound, it 

 fled into the depths of the desert and there concealed itself. Travellers, therefore, who 

 were forced to pass through the sandy deserts of Libya, were advised always to carry with 

 them a supply of strong lively loud-voiced cocks, by whose vigorous crow'ugs they would 

 be protected from the Basiliscs haunting those parts. 



