BASILISK, a creature famous among the earlier writers of natural history for its dangerous properties. It is described by Galen, Pliny, Lucan, and several other naturalists and poets among the ancients, and by Lobo, Prosper Alpini, and Aldrovandi, among the moderns. From their accounts we gather, that the basilisk was a kind of serpent, or reptile, of a yellowish .colour, having on its head several little prominences of a speckled appearance, and furnished with eight feet, and two large scales that served it for wings ; that its breath was so pestilential as to taint the air around it, and prevent any other animal from breathing in ti.e same atmosphere ; and that even its look was so piercing and so baneful, as to cause instant death to the person on whom it fixed its terrible glance ; that it inhabited the desarts of Africa, and the 'lakes that form the sources of the Nile, like the phoenix, it reigned alone in gloomy solitude. From this circumstance, some have derived its name from the Greek P.o-d4orces, to reign ; while others choose to draw the etymology from the crowned appearance of its head. Its origin
was not less extraordinary and portentous than its `figure or its properties. It was generated from a -coca's egg, hatched by a serpent.
Such is the substance of the accounts which the -credulity or invention of the above authors have hand ed down to posterity. We forbear to abuse the pa tience of our readers, with relating the many idle and puerile stories which are told of this wonderful rep tile ; but we may remark, that a similar instance of credulity still prevails in this country, respecting what is called the cockatrice. This creature, worthy to rival the basilisk in its nature and origin, is gene rated from the egg of an old coek, hatched, not "by a serpent, but a toad; and so dreadful is justly deemed this unnatural progeny, that the building, in which such a phenomenon has taken place, must be burnt to the ground, as the only means of averting the danger impending on the master or his family. (f)