similarity of the snake and the eel in general form, since the paired fins of the eel close to the head (see Figs. 24 and 25) correspond in position with the wings shown in the Egyptian drawings of winged serpents. The particular form of winged snake pictured on Egyptian monuments (see Figs. 26, 27) appears to me to be a realisation of stories and fancies based on real experience of the locust. It was the terrible and destructive locust of which Herodotus tells-calling it "a winged serpent." The Egyptian

FIG. 24.-A votive
tablet (ancient
Rome) showing
what is meant for
a snake, but has
been "improved "
by the addition of

fins like those of
the eel.

FIG. 25.-Ancient Roman painting of a so-called marine serpent-really an eel-like fish-inaccurately represented. The fins show how, from such pictures, the belief in winged serpents might take its origin.

pictures of winged serpents have wings resembling those of an insect (see Figs. 26 and 27), and sometimes they are represented with one and sometimes with two pairs.

Aristotle says that, as a matter of common report in his time, there were winged serpents in Africa. Herodotus, on the contrary, says there were none except in Arabia, and he went across the Red Sea from the city of Bats in order to see them. He did not, however, succeed in doing so, though he says he saw their dead bodies and bones. He says that they hang about the trees in vast numbers, are of small size and varied colour, and that

they are kept in check by the bird known as the Ibis, which on that account is held sacred, since they increase so rapidly that unless devoured they would render it impossible for man to maintain himself on the earth. They invade Egypt in swarms, flying across the Red Sea. All this agrees with my suggestion that the winged serpents" heard of by Herodotus were really locusts; and the creature drawn in Fig. 27 may well be a locust transformed by fancy into a winged snake.

It would be a very interesting but a lengthy task to trace out the origin and history of the various traditional

FIG. 26.-Egyptian four-winged serpent-as drawn on ancient Egyptian temples.

n

FIG. 27. Two-winged serpent, symbolic of the goddess Eileithya, from a drawing on an Egyptian temple.

monsters, such as the basilisk, the gorgon, the cockatrice, the salamander, and the epimacus, which have come into European legend and belief, and to give some account of the special deadly qualities of each. St. Michael and St. George slaughtering each his dragon and rescuing a lovely maiden from its clutches are only appropriations by the new religion of the similar deeds ascribed to Greek heroes, such as Hercules, Bellerophon, and Perseus. Often a belief in the existence of a monster has arisen by a misunderstanding, on the part of a credulous people, of a drawing or carving showing a strange mixture of the leading characteristics of different animals, which was meant by the man who

made it to be only symbolic of a combination of qualities. Just as the Latins and mediæval people credulously accepted Greek symbolic monsters as real, and transmuted Greek heroes into Christian saints, so were the Greeks themselves deluded by strange carvings and blood-curdling legends which reached them at various dates from mysterious Asia into a belief in the actual existence of a variety of fantastic monsters. "The Greeks," says M. E. Pottier, a distinguished French writer on Greek mythology, "often copied Oriental representations without understanding them." The con

ventional dragon probably came from Indian sources through Persia to China, on the one hand, spreading eastwards, and to the Latins of the early Roman Empire, on the other hand, spreading westwards; but at what date exactly it is difficult to make out.

In medieval, as well as in earlier times, marvellous beasts were brought into imaginary existence by the somewhat unscrupulous enterprise of an artist in giving pictorial expression to the actual words by which some traveller described a strange beast seen by him in a foreign land. Thus the "unicorn," which was really the rhinoceros, was seen by travellers in the earliest times, and was described as an animal like a horse, but with a single horn growing from its forehead. The heraldic draughtsman accordingly takes the spirally twisted narwhal's tusk, brought from the northern seas by adventurous mariners (the narwhal being called "the unicorn fish") as his unicorn's horn, and plants it on the forehead of a horse, and says, "Behold! the unicorn." Meanwhile the real "unicorn," the rhinoceros, became properly known as navigation and Eastern travel extended, and true unicorns' horns, the horns of the rhinoceros, richly carved and made into drinking cups, not at all like the narwhal's tusk, were brought to

Europe from India. One was sent to Charles II. by "the Great Sophy," and handed over to the Royal Society by the King for experiment. These horns were asserted to be the most powerful antidote or destroyer of poison, and a test for the presence of poison in drink. There was no truth whatever in the assertion, as the Royal Society at once showed. Yet they were valued at enormous prices, and pieces were sold for their weight in gold. A German traveller in the time of Queen Elizabeth saw one which was kept among the Queen's jewels at Windsor, and was valued, according to this writer, at £10,000.

Credulity, fancy, and hasty judgment are accountable for the belief in mythical and legendary monsters. Yet they have great interest for the scientific study of the growth of human thought and of the relationships of the races of mankind. They are often presented to us in beautiful stories, carvings, or pictures, having a childlike sincerity and a concealed symbolism which give to the wondrous creatures charm and human value.

Ο

XIV

OYSTERS

YSTERS are delicate morsels-still appreciated by that class of the population which nevertheless shudders at the thought of eating the high-flavoured "whilk" or the gristly "periwinkle," and neglects the admirable mussel, so rightly valued by our French friends. There are a number of interesting facts about the nature and life-history of oysters, and the different kinds of them a knowledge of which does not diminish, but, on the contrary, rather adds to the pleasure with which one swallows the shell-fish. I remember the time when "natives" were sold in London at sixpence the score. When I was a schoolboy at St. Paul's they were no more than sixpence a dozen at the best shops in Cheapside. That inevitable form of British enterprise which is known as "monopoly," many years since laid hold of the oyster business, and rapidly raised the price of the best natives to eight times what it had been, while the typhoid "scare came subsequently as a sort of poetical justice, and threatened to ruin the oyster monopolists. As a matter of fact, there is no difficulty in freeing oysters from any possible contamination by the typhoid germ. They have only to be kept for ten days or a fortnight in large tanks of sea-water of unquestionable purity-after removal from the fattening grounds (tanks