Dragon. Fantastic animal that has been represented in the form of a snake with wings and feet. The descriptions that have come down from ancient times vary as to the size, the color, and the appearance of this so-called animal: there are many contradictions concerning the bad qualities that have been attributed to it. In distinguishing between the big and small dragons , the length of the former was that of five cubits and that of the others could be as much as thirty, 40 or 50: it is believed that there can be those of 100 cubits or more. It has been said that the big dragons have swallowed stags and other beasts. This fact, as surprising as it is, has been reported and confirmed by different authors, concerning the large snakes of India, see Snake. The origin that has been attributed to certain dragons , saying that they were produced by the mating of an eagle with a female wolf, is as false as it is marvelous. A distinction has been made between male and female dragons , dracones and draconae , in that the males were larger, and more courageous than the females; that they had a crest, and they lived on higher mountains, from where they descended to the plains to find their prey: females, on the contrary, stayed in the marshy places; they were slow, and didn’t have any crests at all. It is believed that there were ashen dragons , of a gilded color, black, with the exception of the stomach that was greenish. I would never have finished if I tried to report all that is said of their venom, of their way of life, of their mating, etc. and to describe the different figures under which we have represented dragons , and the figures that are made of little dried-up rays, and that are kept in natural history collections, under the names of dragons , of basilisks , etc. See Aldrovandi, de serpentibus et draconibus .

There are already in books all too many fabulous stories of dragons ; I admit that there are many founded on the best of authorities, and I am not far from believing them to be true in content, subject to some changes in form. I think that we indistinctly gave the name of dragon to the monstrous animals of the genus of snakes, of lizards, of crocodiles, etc. that were found in different eras, and who seemed extraordinary by their size or by their figure. It is not known to what degree of growth a reptile can attain; if he stays ignored in his cave during a very long term, his figure could change with age, and in the series of generations he could find himself with sufficient deformities or monstrosities to make a dragon of an animal belonging to an ordinary species; consequently dragons are fabulous, if they are taken as a species of animal that is constant in nature; but one can believe that there existed dragons , if one sees them as monsters, or as animals who have attained an extreme size.