Note 40 — CURIOUS CREATURES. (continued 5)

Alluding to the Catoblepon (see ante, p. 85), and its power of killing animals and human beings with its eye. This power does not seem confined to animals, for Sir John Mandeville says:—“An other yle there is northward where there are many evill and fell women, and they have precious stones in their eies, and they have such kinde yt if they behold any man with wrath, they sley them of the beholding, as the Basalisk doeth.”