The Liver . 
4G9 
For in the darke being cast within the way 
Gives light unto the man that goes astray.” 
(Page 119.) 
Memnonides. 
The birds of iEgypt or Memnonides, 
Of Memnon that was slaine in rescuing Troy, 
Are said to flie away in companies, 
To Priames pallace, and there twice a day 
They fight about the turrets of the dead. 
And the third day in battell are confounded.” 
(Page 120.) 
The Liver was a bird of obscure, heraldic origin. The 
name of the city of Liverpool has been L - ver 
derived from this ornithological curiosity, 
which in shape is said to have resembled a heron. 
According to a writer in Notes and Queries (4th series, 
vol. 8, p. 536), “ there is an insurance office near Black- 
friars Bridge, over the porch of which is a bird as the 
crest, called the liver.” 
In his work, Demonology and Devil-lore (vol. i. p. 319), 
Mr. Conway observes that, while a belief in such creatures 
as were-wolves and sea-serpents has arisen from an exag¬ 
gerated conception of forms that have at one time existed, 
the invention of nondescript compound animals is trace¬ 
able to a more poetic and artistic idea. The portrayal of 
such creatures as the sphinx and the griffin are— 
“ a kind of crude effort at allgemeinheit, at realisation of the types of 
evil—the claw principle, fang principle in the universe, the physi¬ 
ognomies of venom and pain detached from forms to which they are 
accidental.” 
Sea-serpent. 
The adventurous men who faced “ the tyrannous 
breathings of the North,” and penetrated the 
“regions of thick-ribbed ice,” may well be 
excused if, amid the novelty of the scenes around them, 
and the hardships they often had to endure, they were 
sometimes led to exaggerate the wonders of those 
unvisited seas. One of the marvels described by them 
