[137] Staunton, China, vol. ii. p. 455.
[138] Humboldt, Researches in America, English Translation, vol. i. p. 133.
[139] “In turning to the consideration of the primitive works of art of the American continent ... when in the bronze work of the later iron period, imitative forms at length appear, they are chiefly the snake and dragon shapes and patterns, borrowed seemingly by Celtic and Teutonic wanderers, with the wild fancies of their mythology, from the far eastern land of their birth.”—D. Wilson, Prehistoric Man, 1862.
“He had remarked that the Indians of the north-west coast frequently repeat in their well-known blackstone carvings the dragon, the lotus flower, and the alligator.”—C. G. Leland, Fusang, London, 1875.
[140] “Dragon, an imaginary animal something like a crocodile.”—Rev. Dr. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 243.
[141] “In the woods of Java are certain flying snakes, or rather drakes; they have four legs, a long tail, and their skin speckled with many spots, their wings are not unlike those of a bat, which they move in flying, but otherwise keep them almost unperceived close to the body. They fly nimbly, but cannot hold it long, so that they fly from tree to tree at about twenty or thirty paces’ distance. On the outside of the throat are two bladders, which, being extended when they fly, serve them instead of a sail. They feed upon flies and other insects.”—Mr. John Nieuhoff’s Voyage and Travels to the East Indies, contained in a collection of Voyages and Travels, in 6 vols., vol. ii. p. 317; Churchill, London, 1732.
[142] Chambers’ Encyclopædia, vol. iii. p. 635.
[143] The following is the nearest approach to such an assertion I have met with, but appears from the context to apply to geologic time prior to the advent of man. “When all those large and monstrous amphibia since regarded as fabulous still in reality existed, when the confines of the water and the land teemed with gigantic saurians, with lizards of dimensions much exceeding those of the largest crocodiles of the present day: who to the scaly bodies of fish, added the claws of beasts, and the neck and wings of birds: who to the faculty of swimming in water, added not only that of moving on the earth but that of sailing in air: and who had all the characteristics of what we now call chimeras and dragons, and perhaps of such monsters the remains, found among the bones and skeletons of other animals more resembling those that still exist and propagate, in the grottos and caverns in which they sought shelter during the deluges that affected the infancy of the globe, gave first rise to the idea that these dens and caves were once retreats whence such monsters watched and in which they devoured other animals.”—Thomas Hope, On the Origin and Prospects of Man, vol. ii. p. 346; London, 1831.
Southey, in his Commonplace Book, pityingly alludes to this passage, saying, “He believes in dragons and griffins as having heretofore existed.”
[144] From the context, Lanuvium appears to have been on the Appian Road, in Latium, about twenty-fives miles from Rome.