THE BASILISC. 
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. 
When 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 with sharp, 
rough, tubercular scales, and a crest of longer scales runs along the back. The teeth are 
sharp and three-lobed, and 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 unequal and rather high tubercular shields. 
Of the family Iguanidce there are about sixty genera, and one hundred and fifty 
species, all of ISTortli and South America and the Antilles. According to Holbrook, four 
genera of this family are known in the United States. 
Ix 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 History to be little more than 
a collection of moral fables, the Basilisc was a creature upon whose 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 there be many four-footed beasts bigger than the lyon, but because of his stately face and 
m agnanim ous minde . ’ ’ 
The Basilisc was thought to be an occasional lusus naturce , having during his life no 
companion of his own kind, and to derive his existence from an egg laid by a cock when he 
was very old, and sat upon by a snake. Some scientific writers, however, better informed 
than the more popular zoologists, said that the egg was not incukated 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. “ This 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 
becometh 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 co.ck, 
whose shrill clarion the bird-reptile held in such terror, that on hearing the sound it fled into 
Ahe depths of the desert and there concealed itself. Travelers, therefore, who were forced to 
