[Illustration: FIG. 52.--DRACO ÆTHIOPICUS. (_Aldrovandus._)] Gesner gives a similar figure, after Belon, of the winged dragon of Mount Sinai; but Athanasius Kircher is more liberal, and gives his dragon not only wings but four legs. [Illustration: FIG. 53.--THE FOUR-FOOTED WINGED DRAGON. (_Kircher._)] In poetry we find Ashtaroth described as appearing to Faust in the form of a serpent with two little feet. As to the mysterious powers imputed throughout the _Shan Hai King_ to different creatures, of controlling drought, rain, and fire, or acting, when partaken of, as remedies for sundry ills and ailments, it may be asked whether we ourselves are free from analogous superstitious beliefs? Will a sailor view without uneasiness the destruction of a Mother Carey's chicken, or a Dutchman, of a stork? Or is the Chinese pharmacopœia of the present day much more trustworthy as to many of its items? As to the human-visaged creatures, both snakes and four-footed beasts, may we not perhaps put them on a par with other fancied resemblances, which hold to the present day, of (for example) the hippopotamus, to a river-horse, of the pipe-fish, known as the hippocampus, to a sea-horse; of the manatee to a merman, and the like? And, lastly, are the composite creatures, partly bird and partly reptilian, occasionally referred to, so entirely incredible? Is it not barely possible that some of those intervening types which we know from the teaching of Darwin, must have existed; which we know, from the researches of palæontology have existed; types intermediate to the _Struthionidæ_, the most reptilian of birds, and the _Chlamydæ_, the most avian of reptiles--is it not possible that some of these may have continued their existence down to a late date, and that the tradition of these existing as the descendants or the analogues of the Archæopteryx, and the toothed birds of America, may be embalmed in the pages in question? Is it impossible? Do not the Trigonias, the Terebratulas, the Marsupials, and, in part, the vegetation of Australia, form the spare surviving descendants of the forms which characterised the oolitic period on our own shores? Why, then, may not a few cretaceous and early tertiary forms have struggled on, through a happy combination of circumstances, to an aged and late existence in other lands. After long, repeated, and careful examination of the _Shan Hai King_, I arrive at a very different conclusion from M. Bazin. I hold it to be an authentic and precious memorial which has been handed down to us from remote antiquity, the value of which has been unrecognised owing to the book being unfortunately a fusion of two and perhaps three distinct works. [Illustration: FIG. 54.--THE PA SNAKE. (_From the Shan Hai King._)]