2 9 2 



CURIOUS CREATURES. 



signifie the mutation or change of worldly affaires/ &c." 

 And, after giving a long-winded inscription, apropos of 

 nothing, he says : " I have also heard that in Venice in 



the Duke's treasury, among the rare Monuments of that 

 Citty, there is preserved a Serpent with seaven heads, 

 which, if it be true, it is the 

 more probable that there is 

 a Hydra, and that the Poets 

 were not altogether deceived, 

 that say Hercules killed such 

 an one." 



Mr. Henry Lee, in his 

 little book, "Sea Fables 

 Explained," says that the 

 Lernean Hydra was neither 

 more nor less than a huge Octopus, and gives an illus- 

 tration of a marble tablet in the Vatican (also given in 



