]8 History of Nature. [BooK VIII. 



fix their Bite in the Elephant's Ear, because that is the only 

 Part which they cannot defend with their Hand. These 

 Dragons are so large, that they are able to receive all the 

 Elephant's Blood. Thus are they sucked dry by them until 

 they fall down dead ; and the Dragons thus drunken, are 

 crushed under them, and both die together. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

 Of Dragons.* 



IN Ethiopia there are produced as great Dragons as in 

 India, being twenty Cubits long. But I chiefly wonder at 

 this one Thing: why Juba should think they were Crested. 

 They are produced most in a Country of Ethiopia, where the 

 People called Asachsei inhabit. It is reported, that upon 

 their Coasts they enwrap themselves four or five together, 

 in the manner of a Bundle of Rods, and thus pass the Seas, 

 to find better Pasturage in Arabia, bearing up their Heads 

 aloft as they cross the Waves. 



1 Dragons are often mentioned by ancient authors, but without any 

 marks by which we can distinguish them from other kinds of serpents. 

 Their bulk did not constitute the distinction, for the bose mentioned in 

 the following chapter are, at least, equally large. The idea of ferocity 

 seems more directly to mix itself with this class of reptiles ; and accord- 

 ingly in the Septuagint version of the Scriptures this is the impression 

 usually implied in the term. In the 29th chapter of the prophecy of 

 Ezekiel the crocodile is signified by that name, as it is also by Marco 

 Polo in his travels ; but in Revel, c. xx. as in the more ancient books of 

 Scripture, a large serpent is distinctly characterised. Among the remark- 

 able things at Rome in the days when the strangest things were sought 

 out to gratify extravagant curiosity, Suetonius says that Tiberius pos- 

 sessed a tame dragon ; and Martial (Ep. b. vii. c. 70) makes it the play- 

 thing of a lady : " Si gelidum collo nectit Glacilla Draconem." The 

 dragon, as a winged serpent, was in the middle ages often represented by 

 the skin of a skate, distorted and cut into form, by which the opinion of 

 ?uch a monstrous shape was spread among the public. Wern. Club. 



