“So when the new-born Phœnix first is seen, Her feathered subjects all adore their queen, And while she makes her progress through the East, From every grove her numerous train’s increased; Each poet of the air her glory sings, And round him the pleased audience clap their wings.” Milton, in “Paradise Lost,” Book V., compares the angel Raphael descending to earth to a Phœnix: “. . . Down thither, prone in flight He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing, Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan Winnows the buxom air; till within soar Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems A Phœnix, gazed by all; as that sole bird When, to enshrine his relics in the sun’s Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.” THE COCKATRICE, OR BASILISK This animal was called the king of the serpents. In confirmation of his royalty, he was said to be endowed with a crest, or comb upon the head, constituting a crown. He was supposed to be produced from the egg of a cock hatched under toads or serpents. There were several species of this animal. One species burned up whatever they approached; a second were a kind of wandering Medusa’s heads, and their look caused an instant horror which was immediately followed by death. In Shakspeare’s play of “Richard the Third,” Lady Anne, in answer to Richard’s compliment on her eyes, says, “Would they were basilisk’s, to strike thee dead!” The basilisks were called kings of serpents because all other serpents and snakes, behaving like good subjects, and wisely not wishing to be burned up or struck dead, fled the moment they heard the distant hiss of their king, although they might be in full feed upon the most delicious prey, leaving the sole enjoyment of the banquet to the royal monster. The Roman naturalist Pliny thus describes him: “He does not impel his body, like other serpents, by a multiplied flexion, but advances lofty and upright. He kills the shrubs, not only by contact, but by breathing on them, and splits the rocks, such power of evil is there in him.” It was formerly believed that if killed by a spear from on horseback the power of the poison conducted through the weapon killed not only the rider, but the horse also. To this Lucan alludes in these lines: “What though the Moor the basilisk hath slain, And pinned him lifeless to the sandy plain, Up through the spear the subtle venom flies, The hand imbibes it, and the victor dies.” Such a prodigy was not likely to be passed over in the legends of the saints. Accordingly we find it recorded that a certain holy man, going to a fountain in the desert, suddenly beheld a basilisk. He immediately raised his eyes to heaven, and with a pious appeal to the Deity laid the monster dead at his feet.