As this view degraded Nature to the level of an emperor feasting his eyes on the sanguinary horrors of a gladiatorial show, or to that of a bull-baiter or other member of “the fancy,” it was not altogether acceptable to thinking men, as it must have been difficult to worship at the shrine of the Creator and Sustainer of all, and yet feel that one was in the grasp of a power so capricious, relentless, and unfair. Nor was the narration even fair to the dragon, as there was no suggestion in it that the attack was made for the legitimate purpose of obtaining food; the story as it stood pointed to a depth of sheer vindictiveness that even a dragon with any self-respect would resent the imputation of. The theory therefore was started that while during the great heats of the dry season the dragon’s blood was almost at boiling point the blood of the elephant was singularly and exceptionally cold, and thus made the creature a most welcome prey. The dragon, with parched throat and molten veins, therefore went as naturally for an elephant as the members of a picnic-party in July go for the iced lemonade or claret-cup. Our ancestors had immense faith in blood-letting, but there is nothing new under the sun, and Pliny tells us that a hippopotamus, when good living has told upon him and he is suffering from plethora, goes ashore to where he has seen that the river reeds have been newly cut, and presses one of the sharp edges of a stem into his leg, and thus vigorously bleeds himself. When the process has given him the desired relief, and there is no immediate fear of gout or apoplexy, he smears the wound over with the Nile mud and quickly heals it. Munster’s idea of the hippopotamus, as shown in his book, from which we have made the facsimile fig. 14, is a much more genuine notion of a river-horse than the beast as we see him in the Zoological Gardens. The way he is dashing up the stream around him as he gallops through the water is a caution. The panther was believed to have an especial power of fascination, a gift ascribed by some to the beauty of his coat and by others to his odour. The savour of the larger species of felidæ, as we find it in zoological collections, is malodorous rather than fascinating, though the creatures could doubtless plead in their own defence that they were placed under artificial circumstances. In one of Spenser’s sonnets we find the first theory upheld in the lines:— “The panther knowing that his spotted hide Doth please all beasts, but that his looks them fray, Within a bush his dreadful head doth hide To let them gaze, while he on them may prey.”