So 



THE BASILISC. 



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 won- 

 drous 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 natura, 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. 



BAS1LI5C. Basltlscus Amerlcanus. 



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

 fall 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 Growings 

 they would be protected from the Basiliscs haunting those parts. 



