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Pliny asserts that the Salamander is made in the fashion of a lizard and marked with spots like stars ; that it is never seen during fair weather, but only in heavy rain; and that it is of so cold a nature that if it do but touch fire it will as effectually quench it as if ice were placed thereon. He, moreover, declares its poisonous nature-a nature that, according to later writers, is so noxious that the mere climbing of the tree by the animal poisons all the fruit, so that all who afterwards eat thereof perish without remedy, and that if one enters a river the stream is effectually poisoned, and all who drink therefrom for an indefinite date thereafter must die. Glanvil, a learned English Cor delier monk who lived in the thirteenth century, goes so- far as to declare roundly, as though undoubted and historic fact, that 4000 men of the army of Alexander the Great and 2000 of the beasts of burden were lost through drinking at a stream that had been thus infected. It was in the Middle Ages an article of belief that the salamander was bred and nourished in fire, and we have ourselves been gravely told that if the fires at the ironworks in the Midland Counties were not occasionally extinguished, an uncertain but fearful something would be created in them. When the salamander is represented it is always placed in the midst of flames. We see that the book to which we have already frequently referred as that to which our grandfathers went for instruction puts the poisonous nature of the salamander in the following graphic way : -"A man bit by a salamander should have as many physicians to cure him as the salamander has spots." The salamander is the well-known device of Francis I. of France, A.D.,1515-1547, the monarch who met our own King Henry VIII. at "the field of the cloth of gold." On this occasion the French Guard had the salamander embroidered on their uniform, and we also find the device freely in the sculpture, wall paintings, and stained glass at Fontainebleau, Chambord, Orleans, in fact in all the palaces of Francis I. The motto adopted with it was Nutt-4w et extinguo, "I nourish and extinguish," a somewhat contradictory saying based on a somewhat contradictory story, for while we are told on the one hand that the salamander is reared and nourished in flame, we are also told that "he is of so cold a complexion that if he doe but touch the fire he will quench it as presently as if yce were put into it." John, king of Aragon, had, almost a hundred years before, adopted the same device, adding to it the motto, Durabo, "I will endure." Asbestos, though really, of course, of a mineral nature, was, from its incombustible property, held in the Middle Ages to be the wool of the salamander. We are told that the Roman emperors had napkins of this material, and that if they became at all soiled they were thrown into the fire, the fierce heat quickly destroying all foreign matter. As the testing flames purified the good while they destroyed the bad, so we presume King Francis intended to hold himself up as a terror to evil-doers and a rewarder of the loyal and faithful. The motto is none the less faulty, however ; for while we find the king claiming both functions, it will be noticed in the legend that it is the fire which nourishes and the creature which extinguishes. The writings of Pliny abound in strange ideas ; some of these he evidently set down without putting the statements to the test, but in many cases he shattered the old beliefs by bringing them to the crucial test of experiment. The story of the extreme frigidty of the salamander's body at once putting out the fiercest fire was a matter that he thus brought to the testing-point, the result being that the unfortunate victim of science was quickly shrivelled up and consumed. Another old statement, equally capable of being brought to the trial, was that if even the foot of a man came in contact with the liquid exuded from the skin of the salamander all his hair would fall off. Perhaps the reason why one statement was tested and not the other was that in the first case any ill consequences that might arise would affect the reptile, while the second would come home more closely to the experimenter hims If. In Breydenbach's travels we find a salamander included amongst the other anim Is, a position that it probably owed to its association with legend, for we also find in the same old author that the snicorn is frankly accepted as a beast that may be met with by the traveller. The book is interesting, too, as giving the first figure that had then been made of a giraffe, or, as he terms it, seraffa. The existence of the giraffe was long afterwards denied by naturalists, and his seraffa was for a very lengthened period held to be but a myth. Brej'denbach was a canon of the cathedral of Mentz, and seems to have been of a somewhat adventurous spirit, for despite all the difficulties of the undertaking-difficulties that in these days of steam-boats, railways, and through bookings we cannot at all realise-we find him visiting Sinai and the Holy Land. His travels were first printed as a folio volume at Mentz in 1486. This was a Latin edition ; but two years later we find one in German, and in less than ten years six different editions were called for in Germany, besides others printed in Holland and elsewhere for the benefit of those to whom both Latin and German were unknown tongues. The book is full of quaint woodcuts, and is altogether a treasure-house of history, natural and unnatural. The salamander is commonly to be met with in many parts of Europe, but the real and the ideal creature are two very different things-as different as the deer-eyed cows quietly ruminating in their verdant pasturage are to the dun cow that taxed all the heroism of Sir Guy of Warwick, or as old grey Dobbin to Pegasus. The real creature is very similar in form to the newts that are so commonly to be found in ponds, but the salamander of Francis I. is more like a wingless dragon, while some of the media;val heralds made it a quadruped something like a dog. Such a creature, breathing forth flames, may be seen in the crest of Earl Douglas A.D. 1483. Shakespearian students will recall how Falstaff rails at Bardolph, calling him the "Knight of the Burning Lamp," "admiral, bearing lantern in the poop," "ball of wildfire," and so forth, all compliments called forth from the effects of strong liquor on the rubicund countenance of Bardolph. He winds up by saying, "Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern, but the sack that thou bast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap, at the dearest chandler's in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two and thirty years." The salamander, like the toad, the slow-worm, or the water newt, is still held to be decidedly uncanny. In our younger days our seeking after such small objects of natural history was always held by wondering rustics as a foolish tempting of Providence, and we have repeatedly been told the most moving stories of the poisonous nature of all such creatures, and especially how newts developed the most alarming properties if interfered with, biting out pieces of the captor's flesh, and then spitting fire into the wound. Prompt amputation or death was the dire alternative offered, though in our own case matters never reached so dread a climax. "Them pisonous effets- " were many a time in those by-gone days held in the hand that now guides our pen, The belief in such fatal powers must have a very disquieting influence on the rustics who hold it. When farm animals, as calves or colts, die mysteriously, some one is sure to start the theory that they have been bitten by an effet while drinking ; and in view of such a belief even the fetching of a pail of water from the pond that too often supplies the drinking water in country places must appear attended with no little risk. The following graphic and amusing letter from one of the correspondents of the Field newspaper shows how the salamander is still regarded in >tural France : "Returning homeward a few evenings ago from a country walk in the environs of D', , I discovered in my path a strange-looking reptile, which, after regarding me steadfastly for a few moments,"walked slowly to the side of the road, and commenced very deliberately clambering up the wall. Never having seen a similar animal, I was rather doubtful as to its properties ; but, reassured by its tranquil demeanour, I put my pocket-handkerchief over it, and it suffered itself to be taken up without resistance, and was thus carried to my domicile. On arriving chez moi, I opened the basket to show my captive to the servants, when, to my surprise and consternation, they .set up such a screaming and hullabaloo that I thought they would have gone into fits. |