That it is an indisputably living and venomous creature, materially, has been the marvel of the world, innocent and guilty, not knowing what to think of the terrible worm; nor whether to worship it, as the Rod of their lawgiver, or to abhor it as the visible symbol of the everlasting Disobedience. Touching which mystery, you must learn one or two main facts. The word 'Dragon,' means "the Seeing Creature," and I believe the Greeks had the same notion in their other word for a serpent, "ophis." There were many other creeping, and crawling, and rampant things; the olive stem and the ivy were serpentine enough, blindly; but here was a creeping thing that saw! The action of the cobra, with its lifted and levelled head, and the watchfulness of the coiled viper impressed the Egyptians and Greeks intensely. To the Egyptian the serpent was awful and sacred, and became the ornament on the front of the King's diadems (though an evil spirit also, when not erect). The Greeks never could make up their minds about it. All human life seems to them as the story of Laocoon. The fiery serpents slay us for our wisdom and fidelity;--then writhe themselves into rest at the feet of the Gods. The Egyptians were at the same pause as to their Nile Dragon, for whom I told you they built their labyrinth. "For in the eyes of some of the Egyptians, the crocodiles are sacred; but by others they are held for enemies. And it is they who dwell by the Lake Moeris, who think them greatly sacred. Every one of these lake people has care of his own crocodile, taught to be obedient to the lifting of finger. And they put jewels of enamel and gold into their ears, and bracelets on their forefeet, and feed them with the sacred shew-bread daily, and attend upon them, that they may live beautiful lives; and, when they die, bury them, embalmed, in holy tombs." (Thus religion, as a pious friend, I observe, writes in a Devonshire paper the other day, leads to the love of Nature!) "But they of the city Elephantine eat their crocodiles, holding them nowise sacred. Neither do they call them crocodiles, but champsæ; it is the Ionians who call them "crocodiles," because they think them like the little crocodiles that live in the dry stone walls." I do not know if children generally have strong associative fancy about words; but when I was a child, that word "Crocodile" always seemed to me very terrific, and I would even hastily, in any book, turn a leaf in which it was printed with a capital C. If anybody had but told me the meaning of it--"a creature that is afraid of crocuses!"