Note 17 — Chapter II

Professor Owen (Palæontology, page 312) gives "slow-worms, serpents," as the English equivalent of Ophidia, the name of his eleventh order of the class Reptilia. Hence the confusion of traditionary worms, serpents, and dragons is not quite so absurd as modern non-scientific persons generally imagine. The Rev. G. W. Cox, referring to the Greek aspect of these mythic monsters, says:—"When the word Dragon, which is only another form of Dorkas, the clear-eyed gazelle, became the name for serpents, these mythical beings were necessarily transformed into snakes."