The writer of the “Speculum Mundi” hath it that “the Basilisk is the King of Serpents, not for his magnitude nor greatnesse, but for his stately pace and magnanimous minde.” Of this magnanimity, however, he gives no illustration or proof, but simply goes on to give the creature as black a character as all other writers do. “His eyes are red in a kinde of cloudy thicknesse, as if fire were mixt with smoke. His poyson is a very hot and venimous poyson, drying up and scorching the grasse as if it were burned, infecting the aire round about him, so as no other creature can live near him. His hissing, likewise, is said to be as bad, in regard that it blasteth trees, killeth birds, &c., by poysoning of the aire, and if anything be slaine by it the same also proueth venimous to such as touch it,”—an altogether unloving and unlovely brute. It must be borne in mind that whilst we in this nineteenth century simply regard such a creature as a weird fancy, countless generations of mankind have accepted the basilisk as a very grim reality indeed, that might in all its fearful power some day cross their paths. Even Sir Thomas Browne, who demolished in his book so many common beliefs, is prepared to accept the Basilisk, for while he declares that “many opinions are passant concerning the basilisk, or little King of Serpents, some affirming, others denying, most doubting the relations made thereof,” he, himself, adds “that such an animal there is, if we evade not the testimony of Scripture and humane writers, we cannot safely deny.” For his Scriptural proofs he quotes Psalm xci.: “Super aspidem et Basilicum ambulabis,” and Jeremiah viii., ver. 17: “For behold I will send serpents, cockatrices among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you.” Many of the old writers we may mention in passing, consider the basilisk and the cockatrice the same creature. That by death-dealing glance a basilisk may empoison is not to Browne a thing impossible, “for eies receive offensive impressions from their objects, and may have influences destructive to each other. For the visible species of things strike not our senses immaterially, but streaming in corporall raies doe carry with them the qualities of the object from whence they flow. Thus it is not impossible what is affirmed of this animall; the visible raies of their eies carrying forth the subtilest portion of their poison, which, received by the eie of man or beast, infecteth first the brain, and is thence communicated to the heart.” Again he says, “that deleterious it may be at some distance, and destructive without corporall contaction, there is no high improbability,” and he proceeds, not by any means without thought or shrewdness, to give reasons for his belief in the possibility of such a thing. “For,” says he, “if plagues or pestilentiall Atomes have been conveyed in the air from different Regions, if men at a distance have infected each other, if the shaddowes of some trees be noxious,