fishes and sea-urchins have a very deadly poison associated with them, which has recently been examined. Among insects we have the bees, wasps, and ants, with their terminal stings; caterpillars, with poisonous hairs; gnats, with poisonous mouth glands. Residents in mosquito-infested countries become "immune" to the poison of gnat-bite, but not to the deadly germs of malaria and yellow fever carried by the gnats. The centipedes have powerful jaws, provided with poisonsacs; the spiders have stabbing claws, fitted with poisonglands. Shell-fish, such as crabs and lobsters, do not possess stings or poison-sacs, but some of the whelk-like sea-snails have poison-glands, which secrete a fluid deadly to other shell-fish. We have already spoken of the poisonspines of fishes; among reptiles it is only some of the snakes which are poisonous, and are known to have poisonglands connected with grooved fangs. Only one kind of lizard-the Heloderm of North America, already mentioned has poison-glands in its mouth, but it has no special poison-fangs, only small teeth. There is a most persistent and curious popular error to the effect that the rapidly moving bifid tongue of snakes and lizards is a "sting." It is really quite innocuous. No sting is known among birds, although some have fighting "spurs" on the leg, and "claws" on the wing.

Only the lowest of the mammals or warm-blooded hairy quadrupeds- namely, the Australian duck-mole (Ornithorhynchus) and the spiny ant-eater (Echidna)— have poison-glands and related "spurs," or stings. They have on the hind-leg a "spur" of great size and strength, which is perforated and connected with a gland which produces a poisonous milky fluid. Recent observations, however, as to the poisonous character of this fluid are wanting. Many mammals have large sac-like glands, which open by definite apertures, in some cases between

the toes, in others upon the legs, at the side or back of the head (the elephant), in the middle of the back or about the tail. The fluid secreted by these glands is not poisonous nor acrid, but odoriferous, and seems to serve to attract the individuals of a species to one another. They resemble in structure and often in position the poison-glands of the spurs of the duck-mole and spiny

ant-eater.

Many insects produce a good deal of irritation, and even dangerous sores, by biting and burrowing in the human skin, without secreting any active poison. Often they introduce microscopic germs of disease in this way from one animal to another, as, for instance, do gnats, tsetze-flies, and horse-flies, and as do some small kinds of tics. The bites of the flea, of midges, gnats, and bugs are comparatively harmless unless germs of disease are introduced by them, an occurrence which, though exceptional, is yet a great and terrible danger. We now know that it is in this way, and this way only, that malaria or ague, yellow fever, plague, sleeping-sickness, and some other diseases are carried from infected to healthy men. Various diseases of horses and cattle are propagated in the same way. The mere bites of insects may be treated with an application of carbolic acid dissolved in camphor. The pain caused by the acid stings of bees, wasps, ants, and nettles can be alleviated by dabbing the wound with weak ammonia (hartshorn). Insects which bury themselves in the skin, such as the jigger-flea of the West Indies and tropical Africa, should be dug out with a needle or fine blade. The minute creature, like a cheese-mite, which burrows and breeds in the skin of man and causes the affliction known as the itch must be poisoned by sulphurous acid-a result achieved by rubbing the skin freely with sulphur ointment on two or three successive days. A serious pest in the summer in many parts of England

These are

is a little animal known as the harvest-man. the young of a small red spider-like creature, called Trombidium. They get on to the feet of persons walking in the grass, and crawl up the legs and burrow into the tender skin. Benzine will keep them away if applied to the ankles or stockings when they are about, and will also destroy them once they have effected a lodgment.

FIG. 15 bis.-A. Highly magnified drawing of a stinging hair of the common nettle. The hair is seen to be a single cell or capsule of large size, tapering to its extremity, but ending in a little knob. The hard case e is filled with liquid a, and is lined with slimy granular "protoplasm" b, which extends in threads across the cavity to the "nucleus" c. The ordinary small cells of the nettle leaf are marked d. B shows the knobbed end of the stinging hair, and the way in which, owing to the thinness of its walls, it breaks off along the line xy when pressed, leaving a sharp projecting edge, which penetrates the skin of an animal, whilst the protoplasm p, distended with poisonous liquid, is shown in C, issuing from the broken end. It would escape in this way when the sharp, freshly broken end had penetrated some animal's skin.

I

XIII

THE DRAGON: A FANCY OR A FACT

AM about to write of loathly dragons, "gorgons and hydras and chimæras dire." Every one knows what a dragon looks like, though probably most people could not give a minute description of the beast. A number of quite distinct creatures, some living on land, some in sea, are spoken of in the Bible by a word which is translated as "dragon." The ancient Welsh chieftains, like many fighting princes of old days, bore a "dragon on their banners, and were themselves called "dragons (Pen-dragon), and when a knight slew such a chieftain fabulous stories grew up as to his combat with and slaughter of a "dragon."

The complete, legitimate dragon of the present day is the dragon of heraldry, which is maintained in proper form and with authorised attributes by the Heralds' College. I have a drawing of this "official" beast before me (Fig. 16). He is represented as of large size, but whether theoretically the heralds of to-day consider him to be as large as a lion or ten times as long and tall I do not know. His body is lizard-like, and covered with scales resembling those of some lizards (unlike a crocodile in this respect). His head is not unlike that of a crocodile, excepting that he has a short, sharp horn on his nose, and a beard on his chin, and also a pair of large

His

pointed ears which no living reptile possesses. mouth is open, showing teeth like those of a crocodile, and from it issues a remarkable tongue, terminating in an arrow-head-shaped weapon (presumably a "sting ") unlike anything known in any living animal. His tail is very long and snake-like (an important fact when we come to consider his ancestry), and is thrown into coils. It terminates in an arrow-headshaped structure like that of the tongue, quite unlike anything known in any real animal. He has four powerful limbs, which are not like those of a lizard or a crocodile. They resemble those of an eagle, and have grasping toes and claws, three directed forward and one backward. In addition, he has a pair of wings, which are leathery, and supported by several parallel bars, a structure which gives the wings a remote resemblance to those of a bat. The wing is quite unlike that of a pterodactyle (the great extinct flying lizard), and has no resemblance whatever to that of a bird, which is, of course, formed by separate quill feathers set in a row. on the bones of the fore-arm and hand. The wings are always represented (even in illegitimate and Oriental dragons) as much too small to carry the dragon in flight. The dragon has, further, a crest of separate triangular plates set in a row along the mid-line of his back, extending from his head to the end of his tail. Some lizards (but not crocodiles) have such a crest. The most like it is that of the New Zealand lizard, called the Sphenodon.

FIG.

16. The heraldic

dragon: observe the bat-
like wings, the ears, the

horned nose, the beard,
the arrow-like tongue and
tail-piece, the scaly body,
the dorsal
crest, the

snake-like tail with its
unnatural arrow-like ter-
mination.

Such is the creature called "the" dragon. But