HERALDRY) .
In the East the dragon is the national symbol of China and the badge of the imperial family, and as such plays a large part in Chinese art. Chinese and Japanese dragons, though regarded as powers of the air, are wingless. They are among the deified forces of nature of the Taoist religion, and the shrines of the dragon-kings, who dwell partly in water and partly on land, are set along the banks of rivers. (See also DRAco.) See J. B. Panthot, Histoire des dragons et des escarboucles (Lyons, 1691) ; C. V. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquites grecques et romaines (1886, etc.) , s.v. "Draco"; Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopddie, s.v. "Drakon" ; Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. "Draco"; La Grande Encyclopedie, s.v. "Dragon." See also the articles EGYPT: Religion; and BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION. (W. A. P.) The term "dragon" has no zoological meaning, but by the lay public it has been applied to two groups of existing lizards. The genus Draco includes a number of species of small lizards, found in the Indo-Malayan region, which are characterized by the possession of wing-like folds of skin projecting from the sides of the body and supported by the greatly elongated ribs. These structures do not involve the legs and cannot be used as actual wings for flight; they serve merely as gliding planes which extend the distance over which the animal can leap from one to another of the trees in which it lives. The largest form is only about io in. in length.
The other lizard to which the name is popularly applied is the giant monitor, Varanus komodensis, recently discovered in Komodo, one of the Dutch East Indies. It is a heavily built lizard of dull colour and reaches a length of at least io ft., thus vastly exceeding all other living lizards, although the extinct Varanus priscus of Australia attained perhaps twice the length.
In military use the name was applied to the musket—orna mented with the head of a dragon—from which the dragoons derive their name; and to-day it is given to a mechanical tractor for drawing guns, propelled by an internal combustion engine and running on caterpillar tracks. This machine, a variant of the steam tractor for heavy guns in use in most European armies before and during the World War, and of the war-time tank, has recently replaced teams of horses for the traction of guns and limbers in certain British field artillery brigades. (See further ARTIL