A third reason for rejecting any connection of the dragon with a real reminiscence of the great extinct saurians is that its origin and its gradual building up in human fancy can be traced in the same way as that of many other fanciful and legendary creatures by reference to the regular operation of the imagination in successive ages of mankind. All races of men have imagined monsters by combining into one several parts of different animals. The centaur of the Greeks is a blend of man and horse, the great “divine” chimera of the Greeks was a two-headed blend of lion and goat, and any such mixed creature is technically called nowadays “a chimera”. The dragon is classed by heralds as a chimera. Sometimes one of these imaginary beasts has its origin in a terrible or weird animal, which really exists in some distant land, and is celebrated or even worshipped by the inhabitants of that distant land, whose descriptions of it are carried in a distorted and exaggerated form to regions where it does not exist. [Illustration: FIG. 21.—The Chinese Imperial Dragon, from a drawing on a tile of the old Imperial Palace of Nankin. It has five claws. No one outside the Imperial service may use it, under penalty of death. Ordinary people have to be content with a four-clawed dragon. Compare this with the European heraldic dragon, Fig. 16.] [Illustration: FIG. 22.—A flying snake with two pairs of wings—a “fabulous” creature thus drawn in an ancient Chinese work, the “Shan Hai King.” This book dates from about 350 A.D., but probably is based on records of a thousand years’ earlier date.]