The poison of a cockatrice was without cure, and the air was in such a degree affected by it that no creature could live near it. It killed, we are assured, not only by its touch, for even the sight of the cockatrice, like that of the basilisk, was death. We read, for instance, in Romeo and Juliet of “the death-darting eye of cockatrice,” and again in King Richard III., “a cockatrice hast thou hatched into the world whose unavoided eye is murtherous;” while in Twelfth Night we find the passage, “this will so fright them both, that they will kill one another by the look like cockatrices.” The good people of Basle might therefore, believing all this, very heartily congratulate themselves on their escape from a fearful peril. The baleful cockatrice is often referred to in literature. Thus in the book entitled “Some Yeares Trauels into Africa and Asia the Great,” written by Sir Thomas Herbert, and published in London in the year 1677, the writer says that Mohamed, on finishing his Koran, was “so transported, that to Mecca he goes to have it credited; but therein his predictions fail him, for so soon as the Arabs perceived his design (being formerly acquainted with his birth and breeding) they banish him, and (but for his Wives’ relations) there had crushed him and his Cockatrice egg, which was but then hatching.” Legh, in his “Curiosities of Heraldry,” gives the usual details of the death-dealing cockatrice, but adds, “Though he be venome withoute remedye whilest he liueth, yet when he is dead and burnt to ashes he loseth all his malice, and the ashes of him are good for alkumistes in turnyng and chaungyng of metall.” Practically, therefore all that stands, or shall we say lies, between ourselves and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice is but a cockatrice moribund. Orthography was not a strong point in these old writers, and the word which is now established as cockatrice, may be met with as cocatrice, cokatrice, kokatrice, kocatrice, cockatryse, cocatryse, cocautrice, cockautrice, coccatryse, cocatris, kokatrix, chocatrix, and many other forms. It has long been a belief in many parts of the country that if a cock crow at midnight the Angel of Death is passing over the house, and that if he delays to strike it is but for a short season. It is evident however that a score or more of different households may hear the same cock-crow, and we can scarcely conclude that it is to be fatal to all, since such wholesale slaughter would quickly depopulate whole hamlets, and we might really almost as well have the dread cockatrice at once.