Half fish beneath, his scaly volutes spread,
And vegetable plumage crests his head,
Huge fields of air his wrinkled skin receives,
From panting gills, wide lungs, and waving leaves;[B]
Then with dread throes subsides his bloated form,
His shriek the thunder, and his sigh the storm.”
Botanic Garden.
And again in prose.
“Though the immediate cause of the destruction or reproduction of great masses of air, at certain times when the wind changes from north to south, or from south to north, cannot yet be ascertained; yet as there appears greater difficulty in accounting for this change of wind from any other known causes, we may still suspect that there exists in the arctic and antarctic circles, a BEAR or DRAGON, yet unknown to philosophers, which, at times, suddenly drinks up, and at other times as suddenly vomits out, one fifteenth part of the atmosphere: and hope that this or some future age will learn how to govern and domesticate a monster which might be rendered of such important service to mankind”!!!
Botanic Garden. Note XXXIII.