The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1884-12-11
TABLED MONSTERS.
Wonderful stories Told of serpents with
Legs and Lions with Snake Tails.


Legs and Lions with Snake Tails.
At what period fancy began its work
in zoology is question which is dis
ereetly avoided or acknowledged puz-
zle by those writer's who have diligently
delved through the records of all people
for traces of fabulous denizens of the
earth, the sea and the air. That fasci-
mating terror of the nursery, the fiery
dragon, it is agreed. is probably the de-
generate offspring of the awful ichthyo-
sauri and plesiosauri of prehistoric
ages. Chiseled on the earliest stone
monuments of Egypt and Assyria and
India exact representations are found
of the dragon which st. George over
came in mighty battle, and which the
annals of Winchester say existed in
England in such numbers in 1177 as to
be great danger and scourge.
Diodorus saw one which was sixty
feet long, brought to Alexandria by
slave to please Ptolemy II. st. Mich
aels dragon the Monkisb Chronicle
says. was much larger than this. Marco
Polosays he saw 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
Polo's like a hawk to sparrow. El
Wsrdee, the Persian, writes that upon
an island, in an unnamed sea, there
was in his time a roc's egg 100 cubits
high, 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 interest
ing was the phoenix This is beauti-
full legend, a yearning, it has been elo-
quently said, for visible sign of inn
mortality. st. Cyril wrote: ..God
knows mans unbelief and provides the
phoenix as an emblem of the resurrec-
ton" Clement said this bird goes to
the land of Egypt once in 500 years,
not to the desert, but to notable city,
to show forth the resurrection, that as
the Lord was killed and rose again, so
the phoenix immolates itself in a fire of
hemlock boughs, and from its ashes
comes world which straightway grows
into the bird of golden plumage with
purple body. The polished literature of
the Latins from its birth until its inn
mersion in the fogs of the Dark Ages,
glows with the description of the phu-
nix as a reality. Pliny knew the bird
well. The populace believed in it. The
brave Manlius rose in the Senate to
mourn the departure of phoenix which
had resided near his house for five hum
dred years. Among other flying erea-
lures which existed in the popular be-
lief of the Latins were the flying pig, an
enormous hog with an appetite that
ravaged the growing crops Of Hero
mene; and the griffin, lion with an
eagles head and wings. Sir John Man
deyille saw griffin fly into field and
carry off yoke of oxen. The Romans
firmly believed in the satyr. Pliny said
they lived in India; Albertus Magnus,
that they inhabited the woods of Sax
ony; another writer that their home was
in the Atlas Mountains, and another
that they were to be found in what is
now Little Russia. There is no record
that satyr was ever seen alive. Al
bertus 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 mystic
rious 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
oh IL, -,
kraken measured mile and a hall
across its back, and its arms were as
long as the masts of a man-of-war
Though the fear it has inspired has ex-
aggerated its size, there is good reason
to believe that the kraken, which is
doubtless the great cuttle-fsh, grows to
an enormous size.
In the age of the Crusaders jewellers
on the coast of the Mediterranean be-
leved in the zitiron, a fish with its head
and breast clad in steel armor The
Arabians had the zedrusus, a fish so bic
that its bones were sawed into planks.
The pretty fable of the mermaid and
the siren is slow in dying Less thar
fifty years ago the people of the country
for miles around swarmed to little sea-
port in the south of England at a rumol
that mermaid had been seen sitting or
a rock combing its luxuriant locks in the
moonlight The sea satyr and the tri-
ton were familiar beliefs with the an
clients. About two hundred 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.
Barnacle geese was curious and strong
belief in the Middle Ages. Sir John
Vaudeville did not omit to state that he
had seen the diminutive goslings dropped
from the shell of the mussel. Within a
comparatively short period letter APP
peared in an English newspaper rela-
ting how a barnacle goose, grown to a
great size, had swallowed full-rigged
ship and all ON board save the writer
N. Y. Star.
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