Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-09-21
FABLED MONSTERS.
Wonderful Stories Told of Serpents with
Legs and Lions with Snake Tails

Legs ana Lions with Snake Tails.
At what period fancy began its work in
zoology, says the New York San, is a
question which is discreetly avoided
or acknowledged a puzzle by those writers
who have diligently delyed through the
records of all peoples for traces Of fabu-
lOus denizens of the earth, the sea and
the air. That fascinating terror of the
nursery, the fiery dragon, it is agreed is
probably the degenerate offspring of the
awful ichthyosauri and plesiosauri of pre-
historic ages. Chiseled on the earliest
stone monuments Of Egypt and Assyria
and India exact representations are
found of the dragon which st. George
overcame in a mighty battle, and which
the annals of Winchester say existed in
England in such numbers in 1177 as to be
a great danger and scOurge.
Diodorus saw one which was sixty feet
long, brought to Alexandria by a slave to
please Ptolemy II. st. MichaePs dragon,
the mOnkish Chronicle says, was much
larger than this. Marco Polo saws he saw
! a roc whose OUtstretched wings measured
sixteen PAGES from tip to tip. Not to be
outdOne by the latter, that adventurous
Englishman, Sir John Vaudeville, relates
! that he beheld one in the Chinese seas,
which was beside PoIo's like hawk to a
! sparrow. FL Wardee, the Persian, writes
! that upon an island, in an unnamed sea,
| there was in his time a roc's egg 100
| cubits high, a firm, white, glistening
! dome, big enough to serve as shelter for
an army. An island in the Chinese sea
was marked out as the home of these
/ great birds.
OF all tabled birds the most interesting
was the phoenix. This is a beautiful
! legend, yearning, it has been eloquently
| said, for a visible sign Of Immortality,
! st. Cyril wrote: ''God knows mans I'M
! belief and provides the phoenix as an
| emblem of the resUrrection.' Clement
| said this bird goes to the land of Egypt
once in 500 years, not to the desert, but
! TO a notable city to show forth the re-
! surrection, that as the Lord was killed
! and rose again, so the phoenix mandates
! itself in fire of hemlock bOughs, and
/ from its ashes comes q worm which
| straightway grows into the bird of golden
| plumage with a purple body. The pol
| ished literature of the Latins from its
! birth until its immersion in the fogs of the
! dark ages, CLOVIS with the description Of
| the phoenix as a reality. Pliny knew the
! bird well. The pOpulace believed in it.
J The grave Manlius rose in the Senate to
/ mourn the departure Of phoenix which
! had resided near his house for 500 wears.
| Among other flying creatures which
! existed in the popular belief of the
! Latins were the flying pig, an enormous
| growing crops Of ClaZOmen3; and the
| griffin, lion with an eagles head and
| wings. Sir John Vaudeville saw griffin
| fly into a field and carry off a yoke of
| oxen. The Romans firmly believed in the
| satyr. PlIny said they lived in India:
! Albertius Magnus, that they inhabited
| the woods of SaNony; another writer
that their home was in the Atlas Noun
| tains, and another. that they were to be
| found in what is now Little Russia.
| There is no record that a satyr was ever
! seen alive. Albertius Magnus, however
| wrote that he once saw a satyr picked in
! brine at Alexandria, where the Ptolemys
/ reigned and collected such curiosities.
Imagination has sounded the myster-
| iOus depths Of the ocean and brought up
| the terrible kraken or kraxen. There are
| thousands of Norwegian fishermen, it is
| said, to whom this monster is no fable
| They can tell its presence by the water
| rising when it rises to the surface in warm
| weather. Bishop Pontippidan's kraken
measured a mile and a half across it's
back, and its arms were as long as the
| mast of a man-of-war. Though the fear
it has inspired has exaggerated Its size,
there is good reason to believe that the
kraken, which is doubtless the great
cuttle-fsh, grows to an enorm GUS size.
In the age of the Crusaders jewellers on
the coast of the Mediterranean believed
in the zitirOn, a fish with its head and
breast clad in steel armor. The Arabiaus
had the Zedrusus, a fish so big that its
bones were sawed into planks. The pretty
fable of the mermaid and the siren is
slow in dying. Less than fifty years ago the
people of the country for miles around
swarmed at a little seaport in the south Of
/ England at rumor that a mermaid had
been seen sitting on a rock cOmbing its
luxuriant locks in the moonlight The
sea satyr and the triton were familiar be.
liefs with the ancIents. About 200 years
ago one Of the latter was alleged to have
been captured off the coast of Portugal in
the very act of blowing his cOnch. Barna-
Gle geese was a curious and strong belief
in the middle ages. Sir John Vaudeville
did not omit to state that he had seen the
diminutive gosIngs dropped from the
shell of the mussel. Within a compare
lively short period letter appeared in an
English newspaper relating how barna-
Gle goose, grown to a great size, had
swallowed a fulI-rigged ship and all on
board save the writer.