THE BASILISa . 79 



"It is a hideous-looking creature, of a dirty-black color, stupid and sluggish in its move- 

 ments. The usual length of a full-grown one is about a yard, but there are some even four 

 feet long. I have seen a large one which weighed twenty pounds. These lizards are occa- 

 sionally seen some hundred yards from the shore swimming about, and Captain Collnett in his 

 voyage says that they go out to sea in shoals to catch fish. With respect to the object I 

 believe he is mistaken, but the facts stated on such good authority cannot be doubted. 



Wlien in the water, the animal swims with perfect ease and quickness by a serpentine 

 movement of its body and flattened tail, the legs during this time being perfectly motionless 

 and closely collapsed on its sides. A seaman on board sunk one with a heavy weight 

 attached to it, thinking thus to kill it directly, but when, an hour afterwards, he drew up 

 the line, the Lizard was quite active. Their limbs and strong claws are admirably adapted 

 for crawling over the rugged and fissured masses of lava which everywhere form the coast. 

 In such situations, a group of six or seven of these hideous reptiles may oftentimes be seen on 

 the black rocks, a few feet above the surf, basking in the sun with outstretched legs." 



In this reptile the throat is not formed into a pendent pouch, but the skin is much 

 crumpled, so that the animal can dilate it at will. The whole body is covered ^vith sharp, 

 rough, tubercialar scales, and a crest of longer scales runs along the back. The teeth are 

 sharp and three-lobed, anil although, when the wide mouth is opened, they present a very 

 formidable array of weapons, the creature is quite harmless, and feeds on vegetable diet, 

 seaweeds forming the chief part of its subsistence. The middle toes are united by a strong 

 web, and the claws are large. There is some difference in the aspect of the young and adult, 

 this distinction being most obvious in the head, where the scales are rather convex in the 

 young, but in the adult are enlarged into imequai and rather high tubercular shields. 



Of the family Iguanldxe there are about sixty genera, and one hundred and fifty 

 species, all of North and South America and the Antilles. According to Holbrook, four 

 genera of this family are known in the United States. 



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 Histoiy to be little more than 

 a collection of moral fables, the Basilisc was a creature upon wliose 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 thei-e 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 naturce, having during his life no 

 companion of his owti kind, and to derive his existence fi'om an egg laid by a cock when he 

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

 tlian 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 

 fall dead from the glance of the kingly reptile's eye. " TMs 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 

 become th 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. Travelers, therefore, who were forced to 



