220 CLASS REPTILIA. 



Thus to a certain extent may be explained the figures of 

 hydras with seven heads, of crowned basilisks, &c. which may 

 be found in the writers of preceding ages. Conrad Gesner, 

 for example, has represented one of these monstrous animals, 

 brought from Turkey to Venice in 1530, and sent from there 

 to the King of France. Aldrovandus and Johnston have also 

 published similar engravings. Seba has given one of an hep- 

 tacephalous hydra, which was for a long time in Hamburgh, 

 and which he considered not to be the production of art, but 

 which has since been most evidently recognized as such, as 

 Linnseus has informed us in his Systema Naturae. 



We must not forget neither, that, among the Greeks, the 

 word ^pccKuv designated, in general, a great serpent ; that 

 some of the ancients have made mention of dragons which 

 bore a crest and beard, which can hardly be applied, says M. 

 Cuvier, to any thing but the iguana ; that Lucan was the 

 first who spoke of flying dragons, in allusion, without doubt, 

 to the pretended flying serpents, the history of which is relat- 

 ed by Herodotus ; and that St. Augustine and other later 

 writers have constantly attributed wings to the dragon. 



It is after the ideas generally formed of these fabulous 

 beings, that modern naturalists have given the name of dra- 

 gon (Draco), to a genus of saurian reptiles of that family, 

 called Eumerodes by M. Dumeril, and Iguanians by our 

 author. The animals comprehended in it are distinguishable 

 at the first glance from all the other saurian s, because their 

 first six ribs, instead of turning round the abdomen, are ex- 

 tended in a right line, and support a production of the skin, 

 which forms a sort of wing analogous to that of bats, but 

 independent of the four limbs. 



The characters of this genus of reptiles may be thus ex- 

 pressed : 



Two membranous wings, supported by extended ribs ; 

 body covered with small imbricated scales ; those of the tail 



