With his odd mixture of credulity and common sense, Scheuchzer often recalls another genial historian of vulgar errors. Like Sir Thomas Browne, he could never dismiss a picturesque legend without a pang. He gives the more blatant absurdities their quietus with the same gentle and reluctant touch: “That the sea is the sweat of the earth, that the serpent before the fall went erect like man ... being neither consonant unto reason nor corresponding unto experiment, are unto us no axioms.” Thus Browne, and it is with the same tearful and chastened scepticism that Scheuchzer parts with the more outrageous “axioms” in his wonderful collection. But he retained enough to make his work amusing. Like Browne, he made it a rule to believe half that he was told. But on the subject of dragons he has no mental reservations. Their existence is proved by the number of caves that are admirably suited to the needs of the domestic dragon, and by the fact that the Museum, at Lucerne, contains an undoubted dragon stone. Such stones are rare, which is not surprising owing to the extreme difficulty of obtaining a genuine unimpaired specimen. You must first catch your dragon asleep, and then cut the stone out of his head. Should the dragon awake the value of the stone will disappear. Scheuchzer refrains from discouraging collectors by hinting at even more unpleasant possibilities. But then there is no need to awaken the dragon. Scatter soporific herbs around him, and help them out by recognised incantations, and the stone should be removed without arousing the dragon. In spite of these anæsthetics, Scheuchzer admits that the process demands a courageous and skilled operator, and perhaps it is lucky that this particular stone was casually dropped by a passing dragon. It is obviously genuine, for, if the peasant who had picked it up had been dishonest, he would never have hit on so obvious and unimaginative a tale. He would have told some really striking story, such as that the stone had come from the far Indies. Besides, the stone not only cures hæmorrhages (quite commonplace stones will cure hæmorrhages), but also dysentery and plague. As to dragons, Scheuchzer is even more convincing. He has examined (on oath) scores of witnesses who had observed dragons at first hand. We need not linger to cross-examine these honest folk. Their dragons are highly coloured, and lack nothing but uniformity. Each new dragon that flies into Scheuchzer’s net is gravely classified. Some dragons have feet, others have wings. Some have scales. Scheuchzer is a little puzzled whether dragons with a crest constitute a class of their own, or whether the crest distinguished the male from the female. Each dragon is thus neatly ticketed into place and referred to the sworn deposition of some _vir quidam probus_.