It is certainly difficult to assume that the descriptions of these creatures by so many peoples and such diverse sources would be all but identical, had they been purely the work of imagination and not drawn from a living model. All accounts unite in describing the dragon as a creature clothed with scales, possessing a flexible neck like that of the plesiosaurus, a large head, with jaws well furnished with pointed teeth like the crocodile’s, a flexible tail like the lizard’s, and wings like a pterodactyl’s. The flying apparatus of these extinct creatures, indeed, closely resembled that of a bat, being a membrane from the vastly extended finger of the fore leg to that of the hind leg. This does not agree with the popular idea of the dragon, but the ancients were not close observers, and it was quite enough for them to know that their gigantic enemy was furnished with wings, without inquiring closely into their arrangement. It does not appear that the dragon was able to fly, but it would rather seem that when he ran to attack an enemy he aided himself by flapping his wings, as a swan often travels along the surface of the water before it fairly takes to flight. Some of the dragons are depicted as altogether devoid of wings, the Imperial Japanese dragon showing no signs of such appendages. Thus both the Chinese and Japanese legends go far to prove that several species of saurians survived for some time the general disappearance of their prehistoric congeners. The legendary dragons differ but slightly from some of the prehistoric reptiles, and as the Orientals were entirely in ignorance of the former existence or appearance of these creatures, it is difficult in the extreme to believe that they could have coined from their own imagination a creature so closely resembling them.
In one respect only we must admit an error, and a serious one. Most of the legendary dragons possessed stings at the tip of their tail. We give up the stings, but at the same time would urge that this error cannot be considered as destructive of the truth of the legend. In the present day it is popularly believed by the vulgar that the larva known as the Devil’s Coach Horse—a creature which when alarmed carries its tail in a threatening manner over its head—is, like the scorpion, armed with a sting. In some countries, too, it is believed that dragon-flies are similarly armed. If, then, such errors can exist in an age of general enlightenment, it may well be that in older times the dragon, a creature certainly rare as well as very terrible, was by the popular fancy endowed with means of defence even more formidable than those he possessed. The breath of the creature is in all legends relating to it described as fœtid and poisonous. And as undoubtedly snakes exhale a fœtid odour, there is nothing improbable in the assertion that the dragons also did so.
No details whatever have come down to us as to the domestic habits of the dragon. We only know that he desolated whole provinces, and that the only method of preserving the community from his attacks was the appeasement of his appetite by the offering of victims. These victims are generally represented as being young females, but it is not probable that the dragon himself was particular on this score. Women would be chosen for the tribute, partly because it was supposed that their tender flesh would be more gratefully received than that of tougher victims; but much more because women were in those days considered of smaller account than men, and could be pounced upon and handed over to the monster with much less fuss and trouble than would have been the case had fighting men been chosen. Women’s rights in those days were much less perfectly understood than at present; and the question of the equality of the sexes had not so much as occurred even to the most speculative philosophers. The origin of the story of the female tribute evidently is, that the dragon was too formidable a creature to be assailed, and that it was deemed sound policy to keep him in a state of lethargy in the cave in which he dwelt by supplying him with an occasional victim, rather than that he should sally out and make his own selection. The whole story would seem to show that the dragon was, like most saurians, content to pass a tranquil existence unless when disturbed; that, like the rest of the race, he was capable of prolonged fasts; and that, huge as was his bulk, a meal once a month or so sufficed for his needs. The dragon was said to roar, and this again is another confirmation of the truth of the legend, for the crocodile when enraged can bellow like a bull, and this would naturally be the sound that a great saurian would utter. Upon the whole, it is evident that the balance of probability inclines heavily towards the reality of the existence of the dragon up to comparatively modern times; and we may still cling to the belief that the national legend of the victory of St. George over the dragon is not wholly apocryphal, but possesses a large substratum of truth.
THE TORTOISE AND TURTLE.
THE tortoise has in all ages been an object of wonder to man. Its form, its slowness of movement, its wonderful coat of armour, its power of prolonged fasting, the absence of any apparent pleasure in its existence, have all seemed to set it apart among living creatures. The Orientals, who are profound thinkers, arrived at the conclusion that the world must be held up on the back of a tortoise, no other creature appearing capable of sustaining the burden. But even their powers of speculation shrank from endeavouring to cope with the inevitable problem: what in that case held up the tortoise? There was nothing in the habits or customs of the tortoise, as met with on the surface of the earth, that could authorise the supposition that it could, in any state, not only support itself in the air, but hold up the not inconsiderable burden of the earth; indeed, the problem was evidently so insoluble an one that we meet with no trace in any of the writings of the early pundits that they ever attempted fairly to grapple with it.
It would certainly seem that nature has been more unkind to the tortoise than to any other creature. It has given it nothing whatever to compensate for the dulness of its existence or its slow and laborious method of progression. Almost all other creatures are, in their youth at any rate, gay and frolicsome, delighting in their powers of speed and activity. No one has ever observed the tortoise at play; it can neither run nor frisk, climb a tree, nor throw a somersault. It plods gravely on from its birth to its death, like a creature in a living tomb, carrying a burden that seems almost too great for its strength—eating a little, sleeping a great deal,—thinking, it must be presumed, for even a tortoise must do something, deeply and uninterruptedly. As it sees so little of the world around it, we must suppose that its meditations are self-directed, and that it is continually occupied with attempts to solve the problem of the why and the wherefore of its own existence. As it has a hundred years to think this out, there is no reason to doubt that were the tortoise capable of conveying its thoughts and conclusions to man the results would be of the highest value, and that it would be found that the speculations of our deepest thinkers are shallow indeed by the side of profound meditations of the tortoise. It has, too, the advantage of long traditions, and the accumulation of the wisdom of ages; for the tortoise is, perhaps, the oldest existing creature on earth. Its congeners, who ranged with it the surface of the earth countless ages before the present race of animals existed, have all passed away, but the tortoise remains almost identical with his far-off ancestors.
The number of varieties of the land and water tortoise, the latter known as the turtle, are very great, and are of high interest to scientific men; the points of structural difference between them, especially in the skull, being very much more numerous and important than those existing between any species of animals, birds, reptiles, or fish. Their habits differ as widely as their structure. Of the land tortoises, some prefer a vegetable diet, some insects, worms, and molluscs, while some of the larger turtles will feed upon fishes and small aquatic birds. Both land and water tortoises are capable of fasting for upwards of a year. Their tenacity of life is extraordinary, for their hearts will continue to beat, and they are still able to move their limbs with considerable force, for ten or twelve days after their heads have been cut off. The tortoise is sensitive as to weather; it does not like too great heat, and lies in the shade when the sun is strong. It equally objects to cold, and buries itself under loose rubbish, or scrapes itself a hole in the ground on the approach of winter, taking many weeks about the operation.
It might be thought that, clad in its waterproof coat, it would regard rain with indifference; but this is far from being the case, for if a shower is at hand it will hurry away to shelter. It can only be supposed that this extreme sensitiveness to all atmospheric changes has been bestowed upon the tortoise to afford it matter for interest and excitement. Not only does it sleep throughout the whole of the winter months, but in summer it retires to rest early in the afternoon, and remains asleep till late in the morning. In the Galapagos Islands the tortoises rival in size those of the prehistoric period, weighing three or four hundred pounds. The speed of these animals is relatively fast, for they can travel as much as six yards a minute. The water turtle attains even a greater size, individuals having been taken weighing from sixteen to seventeen hundred pounds.