20 CLASS IlEPTILIA. 



SUPPLEMENT ON REPTILES IN GENERAL, 



In the history of nature, exhaustless as its subject, and 

 varied as the prodigious multitude of productions which it 

 examines, there are parts capable of occupying, for a series 

 of years, with ever-growing interest, the true lover of science, 

 though presenting to the vulgar mind no images but those of 

 terror and disgust. They relate to animals, from Vvhich the 

 majority of mankind start with involuntary abhorrence, and 

 which in almost all nations, and all ages, have been dreaded 

 for their malignancy, or despised for their stupidity. In the 

 popular superstitions of different lands, the reptile races have 

 almost invariably been clothed in revolting attributes, and 

 even the worship which has sometimes been paid to them, was 

 a religion, not of gratitude, but of fear. The God of Day 

 was armed by the Grecian mythology with his unerring shafts 

 to pierce the enormous Python ; the terrific Acheloiis was 

 strangled, by the son of Jove, in spite of his contorted foldings. 

 The Garden of the Hesperides, and the Golden Fleece, were 

 protected by furious dragons. The serpents of the dripping 

 head of Medusa were sown by Perseus on the arid Lybian 

 sands. The Gorgons, the Furies, Discord and Envy, are 

 armed with snakes by the poets, as an appropriate emblem 

 of their ministry of vengeance and torture. 



But of what consequence, in the estimation of the sage, are 

 the vain opinions and absurd prejudices of mankind.'' To 

 him are equally indifferent the dream of the poet and the 

 prepossession of the clown. Like a new Cadmus, he becomes 

 the vanquisher of monsters, assisted by the aegis of science 

 and the wand of discovery. He finds that the power of 



