Historic Cryptid Headline: June 17, 1868 - Plea For The Existence Of Dragons
Watertown Republican
June 17, 1868
“Plea For The Existence Of Dragons.”
Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, a distinguished English naturalist, is now lecturing in New York. In his last lecture he argued that dragons have actually existed. Although he did not aver that this creature was all that fanciful authors had claimed for it, yet he hoped to prove that a reptile answering somewhat to the received description once existed.
It was worthy of note that all races of people made similar representations of this reptile. The cobra’s mode of attacking and poisoning its victim, its power of expanding the ribs and inflating itself so as to facilitate its passage through the air when darting upon whatever it desires to seize, was also explained. This reptile, the lecturer thought, is the only living representative of the flying dragon. The flying fish, the bat, and flying squirrel were next spoken of as showing the general unity of type that pertains to the animal kingdom, and evincing the fact that nature is prolific in its adaptations, but economic of the means it employs.
The lecture was closed by a description of the manner in which the lecturer came to construct the dragon on exhibition at Sydenham. Particles of the original bony structure of the head and vertebrae were found, and also a portion of the wing framework. The size of the parts discovered showed that the creature when alive must have had bat-like wings, measuring sixteen feet six inches from tip to tip. Other bones were found belonging to a dragon, whose wings were eighteen feet, and subsequent discoveries justified the belief that another of these “scaly” creatures, reasoning from like analogy, had wings twenty-nine feet from tip to tip. He was perfectly satisfied that dragons are among the extinct reptilia, and that they were both of aquatic and terrestrial formations.
As to the fiery qualifications alleged to have belonged to these creatures, there might even be a shadow of reasoning alleged. Many of them - those of the aquatic formation - fed on fish, and the decomposed particles remaining in the teeth of the reptile being highly phosphorescent, may have given to the dragon’s mouth an appearance of fire, and thus originated the fanciful and frightful legends with which the dragon is always associated.
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tags / historical headlines, waterhouse hawkins, new york, dragon, cobra