A more romantic legend makes St. Leonard himself, after the pattern of the earlier saints Michael and George, the slayer of the dragon; and it may be reckoned as the prettiest relic of the legendary lore of Sussex, that wherever the blood of the saint was spilled during the dread encounter, there sprang up abundance of 'lilies of the valley,' which still adorn and perfume various spots in the forest. The legend goes on to state that the saint, on being asked what reward he would like for his meritorious service, demanded the eternal silence of the nightingale, which was granted; and hence it was predicted of the forest, that in it " The Adders never stynge, Nor pe Nyghtingales synge.'

The belief in monstrous serpents lurking among the woods of the Weald of Sussex was not quite extinct in the writer's boyhood, and it might very possibly be traced up through the middle ages to the period of Scandinavian and Teutonic romance; and when a great part of the county yet remained in a condition of forest, it would always be the interest of smugglers, gamekeepers, woodmen, and such like, to invest their several spheres with terrors for the young and the weak-minded, and to 'breathe a browner horrour o'er the woods' (M. A. Lower—Old Speech and Words).

It is curious to find that the district wherein we have been tracing these Dragon legends, has in our time yielded to the geologist gigantic evidences of a former world. In the beds of the Wealden series, in Tilgate

and yet living, to the great annoyance and divers slaughters both of men and cattle, by this strong and violent Poyson, in Sussex, two miles from Horsham, in a wood called St. Leonard's Forest, and thirtie miles from London, this present month of August 1614, with the true generation of serpents.'

The monster was 'nine feet or rather more in length, and shaped almost in the form of an axle-tree of a cart, a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both ends!' He was blackish upon the back, and red under the belly; and besides having large feet, he was furnished with two large bunches so big as a football, which, as some think, will grow to wings.' 'I hope,' adds the narrator, that God will so defend the poor people in the neighbourhood, that he shall be destroyed before he growe to fledge. He left a track behind him, as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snail.' His 'former part' he could shoote forth as a necke, supposed to be about an ell long.' He was of countenance very proud,' and carried himself with great arrogancie.' He cast his venom 'about four roddes,' thereby killing a man, a woman, and two mastiffs. He did not, however, devour his victims, either human or canine, but lived chiefly upon the conies of a neighbouring warren, which was found to be much scanted and impaired in the increase it had been wont to afford.'

This monster was perhaps, after all, nothing more than some misshapen log of wood that superstition had converted into a dragon.

A more romantic legend makes St. Leonard himself, after the pattern of the earlier saints Michael and George, the slayer of the dragon; and it may be reckoned as the prettiest relic of the legendary lore of Sussex, that wherever the blood of the saint was spilled during the dread encounter, there sprang up abundance of 'lilies of the valley,' which still adorn and perfume various spots in the forest. The legend goes on to state that the saint, on being asked what reward he would like for his meritorious service, demanded the eternal silence of the nightingale, which was granted; and hence it was predicted of the forest, that in it " The Adders never stynge, Nor pe Nyghtingales synge.'

The belief in monstrous serpents lurking among the woods of the Weald of Sussex was not quite extinct in the writer's boyhood, and it might very possibly be traced up through the middle ages to the period of Scandinavian and Teutonic romance; and when a great part of the county yet remained in a condition of forest, it would always be the interest of smugglers, gamekeepers, woodmen, and such like, to invest their several spheres with terrors for the young and the weak-minded, and to 'breathe a browner horrour o'er the woods' (M. A. Lower-Old Speech and Words).

It is curious to find that the district wherein we have been tracing these Dragon legends, has in our time yielded to the geologist gigantic evidences of a former world. In the beds of the Wealden series, in Tilgate

Forest, Dr. Mantell has found fragments of the most remarkable reptilian fossils yet discovered. In the grounds of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham are restorations of these animals, sufficiently perfect to illustrate this reptilian epoch. They include the Iguanodon, a herbivorous lizard, exceeding in size the largest elephant, accompanied by the equally gigantic and carnivorous great Saurian (Megalosaurus), and by the two yet more curious reptiles, the forest or Weald Saurian (Pylæosaurus), and the Pterodactyl, an enormous bat-like creature, now running upon the ground like a bird; its elevated body and long neck not covered with feathers, but with skin, naked or resplendent with glittering scales, its head like that of a lizard or crocodile, and of preposterous size, with its long fore extremities stretched out, and connected by a membrane with the body and hind legs. Suddenly this mailed creature rose in the air, and realized or even surpassed in strangeness the flying dragon of fable; its fore-arms and its elongated wingfinger furnished with claws; hand and fingers extended, with the interspace filled up by a tough membrane; and its head and neck stretched out like that of the heron in its flight. When stationary, its wings were probably folded back like those of a bird; though perhaps, by the claws attached to its fingers, it might suspend itself from the branches of trees. In times when the belief in dragons was strong, these colossal remains, when unearthed, were not understood, and philosophers had yet to learn how to reconstruct an extinct animal, starting with a single bone.

It would therefore be a stretch of speculation to identify the dragons of the Sussex peasantry with the above fossil remains; but the association is very suggestive of the axiom, that truth is stranger than fiction.

A curious legend lingers about 'Tees-seated Sockburn, county Durham, where, by long descent, Conyers was lord.' The hall has disappeared, and the legend alone connects the deserted spot with a recollection of its early owners. Sir John Conyers, a doughty knight, is recorded to have slain a venomous wyvern, which was the terror of the country round, and to have been requited by a royal gift of the manor of Sockburn, to be held by the service of presenting a falchion to each bishop of Durham on hist first entrance into the Palatinate. Truly could the Conyers say:

"By this sword we hold our land.'

The Norman name of Conyers may not be, as thought, the veritable style of the dragon-slaying knight of Saxon times; much less probable is it that the falchion of Coeurde-Lion's days, still preserved in the modern house at Sockburn, belonged to him. But the sword of the Conyers was the title-deed to their estate. In compliance with the tenure, when each new bishop of Durham first comes to his diocese, the lord of Sockburn, meeting him in the middle of Neashamford or Croft Bridge, presents him with a falchion, addressing him in these words: 'My Lord Bishop, I here present you with the falchion wherewith the champion Conyers slew the worm, dragon, or fiery