ORDER SAURIA. 219 



those which Pliny has asserted to exist in Ethiopia and in 

 the neighbourhood of Mount Atlas ; which Strabo pointed 

 out in Spain ; which according to Herodotus copulated by the 

 head ; which Elian assures us were the sworn enemies of the 

 eagle ; which Aristotle informs us, poisoned the air with their 

 breath ; and respecting which, Gesner, Micander, Aldrovandus, 

 Nieremberg, Jonston, Charles Owen, and a crowd of other 

 writers have put forth so many lying fables. We are now 

 forced to deny the reality of their existence, and leave them 

 to the embellishment of the images of romantic poetry. In 

 our days nothing of the kind is to be seen. The progress of 

 intelligence banishing the phantoms, dissipating the clouds 

 which disturbed the imagination, destroying without mercy 

 the innumerable errors connected with philosophical absur- 

 dity and religious prejudice, has driven the dragons to take 

 refuge among nations not yet visited by the light of civili- 

 zation. 



Were we desirous to unravel the confusion which involves 

 every thing connected with our present subject, the task 

 would be too mighty and nothing would be performed. Let 

 us remember, however, that even to the present time, the 

 cabinets of the curious, the shops of pharmacopolists, the 

 laboratories of alchymists, and the itinerant exhibitions of 

 mountebanks^ have presented animals of this kind, per- 

 fectly well preserved in appearance, and of forms the most 

 singular and hideous. Even philosophers have witnessed 

 such things, and avowed that the illusion was complete. 

 But such representations are the pure effect of art. All these 

 dragons are fabricated with rays from which certain parts 

 have been removed, with which the head is fashioned and the 

 mouth is cut — with which the lips are exhibited, covered with 

 a sort of Mosaic work ; with which the genital appendages, 

 in the males, are extended in the form of paws, the vast 

 pectoral fins of which arc dried, and raised into wings. 



