It has been asserted by Avicenna that a decoction of chamæleon put into a bath will make him green-coloured that stayeth long therein, but that by degrees this verdant hue will pass away, and the man recover his natural colour, while Porta declares that “with the Gall of a Chamæleon cut into water Wheezles will be called together.” Why anyone should want to call a wheezle together he does not explain, so that the receipt, simple as it is, seems to be of no great practical value. It has been rather a disgusting belief that if a man will lick a lizard all over he will not only be safe from the personal inconvenience of having a lizard go down his throat some day when he might be sleeping in the fields, but that he will have the power henceforward of healing any sore to which he applies his tongue. Our ancestors held many strange beliefs respecting serpents and snakes—one of these was they were created from hair, “women’s hairs especially”—as one old writer is careful to emphasize—“because they are naturally longer than men’s.” One old authority, our oft-quoted Porta, hesitates not to say that “we have experienced also that the hairs of a horse’s mane laid in the waters become serpents, and our friends have tried the same,” and he goes on to mention as a truism to be almost apologized for from its self-evident character, that “no man denies but that serpents are easily gendred of man’s flesh, specially of his marrow.” Ælianus in like manner declares that a dead man’s marrow, being putrified, becomes a serpent. Florentinus affirms that basil chewed and laid in the sun will engender serpents.[120] Another strange idea was that serpents conferred the power of invisibility. Thus John Aubrey, an antiquary and author, and one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal Society, gives in full faith the following recipe: “Take on Midsummer night at xii, when all the planets are above the earth, a serpent, and kill him, and skinne him, and dry him in the shade, and bring it to a powder. Hold it in your hand, and you will be invisible.” His book entitled “Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme” is a perfect storehouse of old-world superstitions, an inexhaustible mine of quaint imaginings.